Heart By Heart
by Sailor FoxFire
Summary: Twilight/How To Train your Dragon XOver. Set in New Moon. What if there was more to Bella than even she had known? What if, in his desperation to help his daughter, Charlie broke a promise he had made to himself to never let his daughter know the truth? How would this unexpected knowledge, centuries worth of it, change our Bella and the story? Will he come back and to what?
1. Preface

_**Summary:**__ Twilight/How To Train your Dragon XOver. Set in New Moon beginning in the December. What if there was more to Bella than even she had known? What if, in his desperation to help his daughter, Charlie broke a promise he had made to himself to never let his daughter know the truth? How would this unexpected knowledge, centuries worth of it, change our Bella? How would it change the story? Can Edward accept the changes? And just what will he return to? Or will Bella be the one to chase after him? Follow me on this journey into a new version of Stephenie Meyer's world. The story will flip between different character POVs. _

* * *

**Preface **

**Bella POV**

_**OCTOBER… NOVEMBER…DECEMBER**_

_Time Passes. Even When It Seems Impossible. Even__ when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me. __**~ New Moon – Stephenie Meyer ~**_

Time has become my enemy. Before I barely noticed its passing. Bliss would do that, and I had been blissful for six incredible months… And then it was ripped away…

_"Bella, I don't want you to come with me," he spoke the words slowly and precisely, his cold eyes on my face, watching as I absorbed what he was really saying._

_There was a pause as I repeated the words in my head a few times, sifting through them for their real intent. "You… don't… want me?" I tried out the words, confused by the way they sounded, placed in that order._

_"No."__** ~ New Moon – Stephenie Meyer ~**_

With a few words my world was shattered and I lost everything that mattered. Pain consumed me and I did not resurface… My world… my life was gone… What was there to live for…

I watched, waiting for my opportunity… Tonight, one way or another my pain would end…

**Edward POV**

_**The Paths We Follow Throughout Our Existences Are All Defined By The Choices We Make. **_Unfortunately, in retrospect, mine seemed to be the wrong ones.

All I had wanted was what was best for her, yet a few words from me, the blackest kind of blasphemy had shattered my world

_"You… don't… want me?" _

_"No."_

A lie… most egregiously blasphemous lie. As if I could ever not want her. She was my world, my life, my only reason to remain in this existence. Yet a few words from me had shattered her faith in me. How could she believe me? How could a few words have destroyed her faith in me? After all the times I had told her I loved her? …

But a few words was all it took to destroy it all… and it was all my own fault…

As I watched death coming towards me I was almost glad of it… They came with pageantry, with a kind of beauty. I watched as our nightmares walked forward to greet us and I was almost glad…

Soon my pain would be at an end…


	2. 1 'Tis The Season

**1\. 'Tis The Season**

** December 15th**

**Bella POV**

Snow on the ground… Well more like ice everywhere… It was Christmas and everywhere I looked merriment abounded. But I was numb to it all. Charlie was exceedingly worried. My behavior was becoming more and more despondent as time went on and he didn't return. My window had sat open all these months and would still be if Charlie hadn't forced me to close it when it became too cold, though it still sat unlocked waiting for HIM. I could not bear to even think his name. Charlie tried but there was nothing he could do for me. He was desperate and I could tell, but there was nothing I could do. I couldn't function without him, and I wasn't even sure I wanted to. And my father was at a loss as to how to help me. He had even made my mother come last September to take me to Jacksonville with her, while I had still been unresponsive. And when I realized that she was packing my things to make me leave, I flew into a rage so violent that if I weren't numb to it all I would have been as shocked as my parents. I screamed at them that they could not make me leave throwing clothes everywhere then I started to cry and scream that I wouldn't leave. My parents thought it was at least something since I was finally showing emotion and thought that I was turning a corner so I was allowed to stay. But after that I became numb. I did everything as before. I went to school, got good grades, went to work at Newton's Outfitters, came home cooked and cleaned and did my homework, but it was like I wasn't even there. Charlie was at a loss. Medication and hospitalization were even discussed when they thought I wasn't listening but it didn't matter to me.

Charlie finally had enough last November. He sat me down and told me we were going on a trip. I flew into a rage. I would not leave… But Charlie would not budge. He had already arranged things at work so that he could take me away for a few months. As soon as school let out, he and I were leaving for a three-month trip to Alaska. Why Alaska? Well it was not Alaska, per say. We were flying in to Denali and then he had arranged to rent a motor home so we could drive to a tiny port town I'd never even heard of, and apparently neither had Google Maps because no matter how hard I looked, I never found it. From there we were going to catch a boat to sail about 15 days or so off the coast to the island where Charlie told me our family was originally from. And what was off the coast of Alaska in the middle of the Bearing Sea you may ask? Where was Charlie's supposed island? No idea and it wasn't on any map I had found so I had to admit I was intrigued despite my mood. The town's name was Snoggletog. Why they chose such a stupid name is beyond me. Charlie gave me some background on it and I had to admit my curiosity was growing despite myself. Supposedly the town was founded on the site of an old Viking camp in Alaska. When Charlie told me that I looked at him like he had three heads. Thinking back I still couldn't grasp it…

_I was preparing dinner when Charlie slammed the door. "Bella?" he called._

"_Yeah dad?" I asked coming out of the kitchen after taking the fish off of the stove and putting it on a serving plate._

"_Sit down," he said gesturing to the couch as he sat in his favorite recliner. Today had been his day off but he had been out most of the day, though not fishing since he had told me he had errands to run. He was wearing blue jeans and a beige polo shirt so wherever he had been it was somewhere where he had to be a little dressed up. Normally he'd just throw on the first thing that he saw. I sat beside him, waiting to hear what was up. "Alright Bella that's it."_

"_What's it, Dad?"_

"_It's not normal, this behavior. And frankly, it's scaring the hell outta me, and your mother."_

"_I'm fine."_

"_The bastard's not coming back, Bella." I nodded. I knew this too well and my chest caved in on itself. I fought to breathe as Charlie shook his head, oblivious as he gathered his thoughts. He shook his head, looking at his feet. "I had not wanted to do this. I had never wanted you to know any of this, but I'm at a loss as to what to do," Charlie muttered so low I was wondering if I had been meant to hear that. It made me wonder what was going through Charlie's mind. He sighed. "Bella I've been speaking with doctor Gerandy about you. I just don't know what to do anymore. Your behavior is just not normal. You don't act like someone left you; more like someone died." I looked away. That's how it felt to me… Like The Cullens died… Like HE died… Like I died, when he left. "He's suggested that perhaps you need to be hospitalized." I looked at him in horror… He wasn't seriously thinking… Charlie shook his head seeing the look on my face. "The suggestion is on the table. You need help and I don't know what to do." He held his hand up before I could speak, seeing as I was getting ready to let him have it. "Hold on a minute. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it. I do have one more option on the table." I looked at him expectantly. "I was out today finalizing the arrangements." He pulled out a thick manila envelope and handed it to me. I opened it and saw a few brochures for traveling to Alaska, plane tickets and a few other papers. I was confused. "You and I are going on a trip when school lets out this December…"_

_I was in a rage instantly. I wouldn't leave, what if he… "NO! I WILL NOT GO! I WON'T….!" I screamed but Charlie cut me off._

"_YOU WILL DO AS YOU ARE TOLD AND I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER WORD! IT'S EITHER THIS OR A HOSPITAL IN SEATTLE!" he screamed at me, as he stood over me. I was shocked into silence. Charlie had never screamed at me like that. He took a few deep breaths to calm down. "Those are your choices, Bella… Wait no. I'm not giving you choices. You and I are going on this trip. End of Story."_

"_No—"_

"_I said not another word. We're going and that's final. School lets out on December 14__th__. You and I will be flying into Denali, Alaska on the 16__th__ and I've arranged to rent a motor home to drive us to the town of Snoggletog near the coast. I would have liked to fly a little closer to the town since there are closer airports, but that was the only flight I could get. The only way into Snoggletog is by car and a motor home is better for such a long road trip. However we are not staying in Snoggletog. When we get there, which I'm hoping will be by the 20__th__ at the latest, we'll catch a boat to the island that we are going to. It's where our family's originally from."_

_I sighed. I was angry, but what could I do. I had the plane tickets in my hand and I knew Charlie would drag me kicking and screaming through the airport if he had to. I knew he was that worried. Like he said, it was this or the loony bin. Those were my options. "Why can't we go somewhere else?" I asked._

_He sighed, seeing as though I was at least willing to listen. "I thought about it. Thought about a trip to California. Even going to Europe crossed my mind." He sighed. "But you need something, and this actually wouldn't be the first time I took you there because you need help." He sighed, as my head shot up. He shook his head. "You probably don't even remember. You were only 15months old at the time anyway." He sighed. "Bella, when you were a year old your mother called me and had me come visit you urgently. You were in California at the time. She'd taken you to get checked up because she had noticed a strange red rash on your back and you were always crying in pain, inconsolable. As soon as I heard, I took the next flight out. By the time I got there, you'd already been hospitalized…" I saw tears roll down Charlie's eyes. "After a battery of tests, you were diagnosed with a very rare form of leukemia. One of the few that was untreatable. They gave you 2 years at most." Charlie choked on the words and I was shocked. I'd never know, but…_

"_But I'm here now?"_

_He nodded. "Yes, you were considered a medical miracle. Your mother couldn't deal with it so she handed custody to me. You know how she is. I took you to every specialist I could find but all said the same thing. Enjoy your daughter while you can. I was beside myself. I didn't know what to do. Then my mom mentioned to me something that I had never known. That in the island where our family's from there were no people with cancer. I didn't want to think about that place. I had always hated our family history, hated the island… But I was desperate, you were dying right in front of me and there was nothing anyone could do. When she told me that I grasped to that last straw and arranged the trip there. Actually the very same trip we will be taking again in December. When we got to the island, the doctors there reviewed your case and examined you. They concurred with the diagnosis… But not that it was hopeless. It's not approved in the US, but they had a treatment for you. It was experimental, they told me. It may not work. But I didn't care. It was hope and that was all that mattered. We lived there on the island for a little over a year while you underwent treatment." Then he smiled. "It was so hard. But at the end of it. You were cured. It did have a couple of side effects, like your ultra-pale skin that basically never tans and you lost your hair, though it grew back and thicker than before, fuller, but that was a very small price to pay for your life." Charlie stood and went to the cabinet on the far side of the living room. He opened the bottom panel where he kept albums and pulled one out blowing dust off of the cover and handed it to me before sitting back down. I opened it as he continued the story._

"_I might have hated the island. But you loved it. Though you were sick and weak because of the treatment, I could barely get you to hold still. You just wanted to explore every nook and cranny of it." I looked through the pictures amazed. "The island has pretty much looked the same for over 600 years. Sure, upgrades have been made with time but it has been preserved in the spirit of when our ancestral father ruled it. It is the last, though unknown as it is in no map given that it along with the archipelago it rests in is owned by the people there so it's not on any maps, true Viking settlement. Most history books, except perhaps for college books, have it wrong. Vikings actually sailed the 7 seas. In fact some of the myths and legends of Viking lore speak of this very fact. And even Columbus knew this because he had learned from Vikings that the world truly was round. Our family are direct descendants of one of the few tribes that settle apart from Iceland. The Hairy Hooligan Tribe." I couldn't help the laugh that escaped me. He nodded with a smile, it had been so long since I had laughed at all. "I know great name right. Its gets better. Our ancestral father's name is Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III." I was choking on my laugh. "Great name I know, but at the time it was Viking tradition to give children horrible names to fend off gnomes and trolls, so his was actually not as bad as some others. Actually come to think of it, it is family tradition for the chief of the village to take the name of our ancestors be it Hiccup's or Astrid's, his wife, when they take over as Chief. The chief is kind of a cross between a territorial governor and a noble of some kind." He waved his hand in the air. "I've never really understood that part. Anyway, they've preserved the island so it is as it had been back then and you loved running around all over, exploring. The town we're driving to, Snoggletog is actually named after a Viking holiday which is kind of like Christmas, even celebrated, or used to be anyway, around the same time. Supposedly it was founded on the site of the Viking settlement that Hiccup and his people established when their island was taken over and they were forced from it, though he later led his people to reconquer their home and they kind off split off the population between the settlement and Berk, which is the name of the island. Until the actual town was founded in the 1800's or so. It's a little bigger than Forks and very quaint. It actually is a little similar to the island though still traditionally Alaska."_

_I looked through the pictures. And I was flabbergasted. I thought it was beautiful. Like a time capsule. It seemed so well preserved. And I was really curious. Apparently there was so much I had not known. The pictures of me clearly showed how sick I was and I had to admit I was shocked. I'd never known. "After you were healthy again and when I'd been assured you could make the trip. We came back home. You were a little over two then." He shook his head. "This is actually part of the reason I hate the island. There's so much secrecy surrounding it and I've never understood why." I looked up at him curious. "We're not allowed to speak of it to outsiders. We take vows of secrecy in order to travel there. Why that is I haven't got the slightest idea, but there you go. I respected my vows since they had done so much for you so when we returned I told your mother that we'd gone to Europe instead. That I'd found a specialist there that had an experimental treatment for you and that it had worked. You were healthy again." He shook his head. "You know how she is. As soon as you were healthy, she wanted you back. She even took me to court though the judge agreed to let me keep you after she had abandoned you, especially since at the time she was homeless… But well after she got her life in order in Phoenix she took me to court again and won custody of you when you were 4. That was the last Christmas you spent with me. We always let you believe that I basically just gave in to what she wanted, but the only reason I did that was because I could see what our fighting was doing to you so I let her have her way."_

_I shook my head. Charlie could be obtuse. As usual since he was in love with her, even to this day, he gave her what she wanted. "And we're going there now…"_

"_They helped you once, and you had loved the island so much that I thought it might help you. You needed something then and found it there… Perhaps lightning will strike twice. I don't know, but whatever… We are going and that's final. We'll be gone three months. I've already made all the arrangements. My deputy will take over as Chief temporarily while I'm away and I actually have several months' worth of vacation time and sick days saved up since I rarely used them, even after the trips to California years ago. So I'll be using it. Will leave in late December and will return late March, around the 15__th__ or so depending on the weather. The school's already been informed and since Washington has an online schooling option I've signed you up for it for the time we're away. As soon as you're done with finals we're gone."_

No matter how much I argued, Charlie was unmovable. Which was why I was now packing. We were leaving tomorrow. As I finished packing my bags, I became aware of singing in front of the house. I looked out the window and saw several men and women standing out front singing. Right, carolers. Forks, being the town that never seemed to changed, was big on traditional Christmas complete with carolers, hot cider and even roasted chestnut vendors. I had to admit that I had loved this all when I was little, the few times I spent Christmas here with my father. _This would have been our first Christmas…_That thought made my chest constrict painfully and I could hardly breathe. God I missed him. I saw Charlie step outside to them with a tray of goodies as tradition called for. They took the mugs of hot chocolate and smiled gratefully, finishing them as quickly as the hot liquid would allow. The carolers began a new song, one of Charlie's favorites.

_**Deck the halls with boughs of holly,  
Fa la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.  
Tis the season to be jolly,  
Fa la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.**_

_**Don we now our gay apparel,  
Fa la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.  
Troll the ancient Yule tide carol,  
Fa la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.**_

_**See the blazing Yule before us,  
Fa la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.  
Strike the harp and join the chorus.  
Fa la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.**_

_**Follow me in merry measure,  
Fa la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.  
While I tell of Yule tide treasure,  
Fa la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.**_

_**Fast away the old year passes,  
Fa la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.  
Hail the new, ye lads and lasses,  
Fa la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.**_

_**Sing we joyous, all together,  
Fa la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.  
Heedless of the wind and weather,  
Fa la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.**_

That song just grated on my nerves. What exactly did I have to be jolly about? The love of my life had abandoned me. He didn't want me. My dream family was gone, they had probably already forgotten me. My chest was a deep crater and I could barely breathe because of the pain, my lungs missing. And now on top off all of that I was being dragged to, quite literally, the middle of nowhere; forced to leave behind memories that were all that was basically keeping me alive. And I couldn't fight it. It was this or the nut house and from the second option I might never return. I rolled my eyes. I really needed to get a hold of my anger. Charlie was just doing what he thought would help. He didn't understand how I felt, didn't understand that the only thing that would fix me would never return, but I couldn't fault him. He needed something to hold on to, anything. I also had to admit that I was curious, despite myself. Charlie's story had made me wonder so much and I just had to know…

Oh well. What could it hurt really? Maybe a change of scenery would be of some use and I could at least learn more about my family history. Charlie's explanation had left me wondering about so much. I sipped up the last bag. Since we would be gone for three months I had packed nearly all my clothes, at least those that were for cold weather and had shopped endlessly for supplies. Working at Newton's had been a blessing. I had needed quite a bit of expensive gear. Especially cold weather parkas and snow boots and my employee discount had helped tremendously. Alice would have been proud to see how much I had shopped just for this trip. I took the last bag downstairs and put it by the door with my others and Charlie's we would be leaving at dawn for Seattle Airport and our plane took off at 11. Charlie came back in after the carolers had moved on. He was dressed for the cold and nodded with a small smile as he saw me set down the last bag. It was almost dinnertime and there was no food in the house since we were leaving so Charlie and I went to the Lodge, the tacky dinner in town, for dinner. He made me order a stake with mashed potatoes like him and watched me as I ate it, for once eating it all as before I had barely been eating enough to keep a bird alive and my last doctor's exam had been an eye-opener for him so he had been cajoling me into eating more ever since. I had needed to go to the doctor since traveling required some vaccines I didn't have up to date like tetanus. God I hated needles. Charlie even cajoled me into eating a slice of apple pie with vanilla ice cream before we left. Charlie had wanted me to see a bit of the town since this would have been the first time I would have seen it lit up for Christmas in years, so he took the scenic route back home. I had to admit it was pretty, but it didn't really lift my mood. We got back home at about nine and decided to turn in since we were getting up very early.

**December 16****th**

Morning dawned way too soon considering I barely slept because of my nightmares. They were always the same. He would leave me and I would search the woods until I could no longer even remember where I was or what I searched for as if what I looked for had never even existed and thus neither did I. I always woke up screaming. It was 5 in the morning when I rolled out of my bed, time to get up and get dressed. We were leaving in an hour. I heard Charlie coming out of the bathroom and took my turn, making sure to grab my toiletry bag and storing it in my carryon. My other necessities already packed. I dressed in as many layers as I could, because if I thought Forks was a freezer. Alaska is the deep freeze. Long thermal underwear, undershirt and pants, jeans a thick blue sweater and new heavy weather parka that reached to my boots in blue. And I still expected to be cold. Once dressed I grabbed my carryon and pulled an envelope from my nightstand. On the front was a simple word: Edward. It was a letter because despite everything I was still hoping like the damned fool I was. I took the note out reading it over one last time to make sure I explained everything.

_Edward_

_If you're reading this please know that I will return. These last few months without you have been terrible. Charlie has been very worried. So worried he's decided to take me away on a long trip. I didn't want to go and I fought it. But I honestly had no choice. It was this or the nut house. Charlie made that quite clear. I know that this makes me sound like a co-dependent fool but since you've been gone I haven't been able to function and I'm not even sure I even want to. It has worried Charlie to no end so he's dragged me away. We're going to Alaska. Well not Alaska per se. We're flying into Anchorage and the driving to a town called Snoggletog and there catching a bot to an island 15 days or so off the coast. Don't ask me. I know it's not on any map. I looked and Charlie admitted it. He told me we'd been there before; he even revealed things I'd never known before. He'd thought about a trip to California or Europe, anywhere really. But he felt that we had found help there for me once before and it might help again. I didn't know about this but when I was only a year old my mother called him urgently. She'd taken me to get checked up because she had noticed a strange red rash on my back and I was always crying in pain, inconsolable. As soon as he heard, he took the next flight out. By the time he got there, I'd already been hospitalized. _

_The diagnosis was a very rare form of leukemia. One of the few that was untreatable. They gave me 2 years at most. But I'm here now because my father swallowed his pride and went there for help. In the US it can't be treated. All the specialists said to just enjoy the time I had left. But they had a treatment on the island. My grandma told him and he took the last ray of hope and he took me there. I was dying right in front of him. The doctors there had an experimental treatment that saved me. It was hard, we'd lived there for a little over a year but in the end I was healthy again. Charlie hates the island and all the history attached to it. Our family has held it for more than 600 years. I don't understand why he hates it. He admits that I had loved it all while there, but he wants to help and he had found help for me there before so he's hoping lightning will strike twice. I have to admit that his story made me curious, and the pictures he showed me only added to it. I left the album on my nightstand if you want to see it. Please, please, Edward. If you read this letter, please wait for me. I'll be back. Charlie wants to be away until mid to late march but I will be back. Know please that I love you and I've been waiting for you. I'm only going because Charlie's making me. Maybe you can follow, I don't know but please if you find this letter know I'll return. I've always loved you and always will._

_Love Always_

_Bella_

I sighed and folded the letter. Tucking it into the envelope I sealed it fastened it to the curtains on the side facing the window with safety pins so that in case Edward came he would see it and take it. I had to close and lock the window since no one would be home but I knew that would not deter him. With one last check of the room I went down the stairs and joined Charlie in the car for the drive to Seattle.

**December 21****st**

It was a long trip. That's putting it mildly. Longer than I thought I could stand. Four and a half days in a tiny motor home was a test for anyone especially since the weather, while pretty good for Alaska, had slowed our progress. And Charlie getting lost certainly didn't help. What is it with men and asking for directions? The plane ride had gone quicker than I had thought and we had found ourselves in Anchorage since our plane had engine trouble and had to land earlier. There were no flights available to Denali so we had to drive to our destination adding a considerable distance to an already long trip. Why people thought this was fun was beyond me. The rental RV company had been a nightmare since our reservations had been made to take the RV out of the Denali place and they didn't have one. We were forced to rent a car to drive 60 miles or so to Denali to even get the bloody RV. I don't know what I expected but what we got wasn't it. It was not so much an RV as a camper but what could you do. Charlie had been the one to arrange everything himself without using a travel agent… or a bloody computer to do some research. Well what could you do? To him the trip was fun, like the kind of trips he had taken with my grandpa.

Clearly Charlie had never been on a trip with any woman or girl in his life, except maybe me when I had been a baby. Maybe he should have remembered that. Yeah, I was extremely pissy, being cooped up in a car for almost 5 days will do that. But now, according to Charlie's map, and here's hoping we weren't lost again. We were 50 miles from our destination. Figures that was when we'd need to stop for gas. I went into the convenience store to get something to drink, we'd run out of water the day before since again Mr. Great Trip Planner had not acquired enough groceries for 2 adults let alone enough water and thus we hadn't had anything to eat since the previous evening. I was very fortunate that the convenience store happened to have a hot dog booth on the inside so after purchasing drinks, snacks and a gallon of water. I also bought 6 hot dogs with everything. Now neither Charlie nor I could stomach that much hotdog but since we hadn't had anything to eat since the day before and it was now mid-afternoon I knew that we would polish them all off in no time and this was coming from me and I'd been eating barely enough to keep a bird alive for months.

"Good thinking, Bells," Charlie said as I climbed back in the camper and he saw the hotdogs. I didn't say anything. I'd sort of been giving him the silent treatment since the day before for his great planning, especially with the bathroom breaks. He too was starving. I passed him his three along with a Coke and he polished before I'd finished my first as I'd thought he would. He sighed after I still hadn't said anything. "Alright I get it. I know I should have thought things better," he finally said. "But this is part of the experience."

I shook my head and glared as I finished my third hotdog. "The experience dad?" I snorted. "Did you do the same when I was a baby?" The way he blushed told me I'd guessed right. "Wait so let me get this straight," I shook my head incredulously, "You took this exact trip with me at a year old, while sick and forgot to pack enough food and water. Probably thinking that you could buy it on the road. Which would be true, most likely, if we weren't traveling to a town that's not even on a standard map? And we're driving through a lot of untouched wilderness? Didn't you learn your lesson the first time?"

He shook his head, "I thought it would be fun though getting lost was not part of the plan."

I shook my head. "Charlie this is the furthest thing from fun there is. A shorter trip might have been fun, but not five days stuck in a car with no bathroom."

"Knew I should have picked a closer airport," he muttered so low I was sure I wasn't meant to hear it.

"Wait one minute, there. You mean to tell me there was a closer airport?"

He sighed clearly I had not been meant to hear that. "Yes. In the larger town near Nome. The trip then would have taken 2 days maybe a little more."

"And why didn't you pick that?"

"I thought this would be more fun. We never spend time together."

I sighed. "Ch—Dad. We're spending three months on vacation. There was no need to make this trip longer. Also you realize that it is the 21st. We were supposed to meet the boat on the 20th. They've probably already left."

He shook his head. "No they haven't, actually. This isn't a cruise, Bella. It's a transport ship for passengers and supplies only meant to go from the island to the town and back, like a ferry. We were actually going to stay in Snoggletog for a day and set sail this evening so we still have some time to get there." I sighed. My tiny hope that we would go home gone. And we still had 5 hours left in the drive. I tried to get some sleep.

* * *

Arriving in the town at long last felt like probably the most welcome sight in the world. Except stopping and finding him waiting for me, but oh well. The town was a lot like Forks. Like it was frozen in time. I could see what Charlie meant when he explained that there was a lot of Viking influence to the town. Though there were mostly log homes like all of Alaska here you could see the decorative arches I had seen in the pictures of Berk. Despite myself I was looking forward to this trip. I think mainly because it meant getting out of this damned camper. Given that we were late getting here, Charlie drove us right to the docks since we had little time to board. It was now 7 pm but it felt like midnight since it was so dark. Ironically there was another RV rental place right at the docks so we turned in the RV and headed to catch our boat. "Where exactly are we supposed to meet the boat, Dad?" I wondered since there were quite a few.

"Oh," Charlie said as if remembering. He pulled the folder out of his backpack and rummaged through the paper for a few minutes before finding the correct paper. "It's at dock 17," he told me, while turning us around since we had been going in the wrong direction.

I sighed. _Note to self: Next time I have to go anywhere with Charlie, read the directions since he'll get lost in a paper bag,_I thought to myself as I followed him to the dock. The ship was pretty, actually. It was a modern take on an old Viking row ship. It was made out of wood and steel like all boats and even had oars which I could tell truly did work given the hydraulics I glimpsed out of the openings, at least I thought they worked, but I was no judge of it. On the gangplank we were greeted by a lovely lady.

"Hello. My name is Astrid Haddock. You must be Bella and Charlie Swan, right?" Astrid introduced herself. Clearly she must be either the Chief or his wife given what Charlie had told me about how the chieftain would take the names of our illustrious ancestors when they took the chiefdom. I tried looking at her, but her face was all in shadows since she was standing right beside and just slightly in front of a lamp. I could, however, tell that she was blonde and a few inches taller than me.

Charlie nodded. "Yes we are," he said as he walked up the plank and shook her hand. I followed quietly. I really wasn't in the mood to speak after that trip.

She smiled and led us into the ship and to our cabins. "You're just in time. We're getting ready to head off now. There are no other passengers besides yourself since the trip only had you two for pickup. So it'll just be me and my husband, who is sailing the ship, and yourselves. I hope you have a comfortable stay. It is a bit of a long trip." Great another long trip. She opened the door and handed Charlie a key. "Now the cabins are for two people normally, but because there's no one else on this trip you can both have your own cabins." And for that I was unspeakably grateful. The thought of sharing a room with Charlie was a nightmare. She handed Charlie his key and then pulled another keycard out of her pocket for the next cabin. "Here's your room Bella. Oh, on the bed in both rooms are warmer coats made of furs. Given that we're on the ocean it is a bit colder here than in the town and Berk is having an unusually cold winter, even for us, so they would be of help. If you need anything, just let me know. And dinner will be waiting for you in the dining hall when you are ready."

I nodded gratefully as I stepped into my cabin and closed the door. It truly was meant for two people. It was a fairly good size and the bed looked like heaven after such and uncomfortable trip. I basically dropped my bags on the floor and ran for the bathroom oh so eager to get cleaned up after 5 days in a car. That hot shower was heavenly too. And I had to take my time with the hot water. It was just too good to rush. I dried off with the towels provided and then headed out to my room to get my clothes since I had forgotten them. I dressed quickly and found on the bed the coat she had spoken off. I had to admit that it was beautiful. It was long, down to my ankles and made of what felt, and probably was, real fur. With the inside lined n the softest wool I had ever felt. It also had a bit of padding and was much lighter than my coat. It also fit very well, like it was made for me so I was pretty comfortable. I wasn't sure how well it would keep me warm since it wasn't as thick as my parka but I liked it. I met Charlie outside. He had opted to wear his own coat and as we stepped onto the deck he regretted it. It was freezing and blustery. I was warm and snug in my fur coat. Only needing to raise my hood to keep my head warm but Charlie was trembling before we took two steps.

"Dad, go get your coat," I told him and he nodded running back down to his room and changing coats. Once he came back we headed to the dining room. I made a point to ask if there was another way there that didn't involve going outside. Dinner was a lovely fish stew with bred rolls and salad. I instantly took to it tucking in hungrily. I'm not sure why it revved up my appetite after so long of a lack of it but I tucked in like I hadn't seen food in a week. I was contemplating asking out hostess for the recipe. I needed something new to do with the endless fish Charlie brought home. Our hosts weren't in the dining hall, which I noticed comfortably sat 50 but we were the only ones on board. It was kind of eerie actually. After dinner, Charlie and I both retired to bed. It had been a long trip here after all. As my head rested on the pillows I prayed for at least one night without nightmares.


	3. 2 On The Sea of Discovery Pt 1

_**Author's Note: **Hello everyone. I've been having a little problem with the previous two chapters since I've been writing late at night, but I've now corrected them and reposted them along with this new chapter. I was originally going to be one chapter but it was getting too long and there was a point where the story naturally broke to introduce a change of direction and new characters so I decided to break it into two parts. I've planned it to be 25 chapters long but it may change as time goes on. Fair warning though. For those of you that are Jacob fans, stop reading now, this is so not the story for you as, **and yes this is a spoiler alert,** my version of Jacob is a monster in wolves clothing. It will also be a while before I introduced Edward and the Cullens back to the story, though I may check up on what he's doing. Can't have him going to Italy yet before Bella's ready for him, now can we. Poor guy, he's suffering for being dumb._

_Also check out the banner picture for this story I posted in Photobucket. I may add other pictures over time and will let you know._

_Now on with the story. I'll try to post few Author's note but I may post them if I need to._

* * *

**2\. On The Sea of Discovery Pt. 1**

**Bella POV**

"_We need to talk," he said to me as he led the way deep into the woods_

**NO PLEASE! NOT AGAIN!. **

_But it wasn't the same nightmare. As we walked through the woods Edward never stopped. He just kept walking and walking ahead of me, never waiting and I was falling behind. "Edward please, wait for me." He wouldn't listen and kept on walking. Finally he led me to a beach I'd never seen before. There was snow there and ice in the water. I was confused. Edward led me down the beach and I was running to catch up. But I never could. After what seemed like forever he led me back into the woods which soon gave way to a rocky path with little to no vegetation. And still he would not stop, not even when I fell down. Soon I lost sight of him after one of my many falls. I got up and kept running, searching for him. But I had lost him. The terrain was treacherous so running was dangerous, but I kept on, still searching for him. I found a cave and went in, hoping he might be there. It was dark and I had no light. Soon I was lost. But still I kept on walking. Then a noise caught my attention. I was scared then and tried to turn around, but then I locked eyes with a large pair of eyes…_

I woke up with a scream…

"Shh, Bella. Calm down, sweetheart," I heard a voice in my room. A light turned on. There standing before me was Astrid. She smiled at me sheepishly. "Sorry sweetie. You were screaming in your sleep so I came to check on you." I nodded trying to catch my breath. She handed me a glass of water as she sat beside me. She really was pretty and nice too. I drank the water down and it did help. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked. I shook my head. She nodded. "Want to take a walk? You haven't been out of your room except to eat since we set sails five days ago."

Wow, had it been five days already. I guess time flew by when your heart was broken. "Sure," I told her. Getting out of this stuffy cabin might be of help. I certainly wasn't going to go back to sleep after that nightmare. Especially since it was so weird. And what was with those eyes? I shook my head and got out of bed, dressing quickly while Astrid waited for me by the door. Once I was dressed, I followed her out of the door.

She led me up to the deck. "We're actually in luck tonight, Bella. It's cloudy but the sea is calm and it's not as cold tonight." I nodded. I was very warm in the coat she had given me but the air against my face wasn't as cold as the last time I was up here. "What do you know about our family, Bella?" she asked as we walked.

It was then I remembered my curiosity. "Not much really. Charlie said that he hated our history and had never wanted me to know it, but had changed his mind because I needed help," I told her.

She nodded. "It isn't so much as that he hates our history as that he's afraid of it, Bella."

What? Afraid? "What is there to be afraid of?"

She smiled. "Nothing really. It's just Charlie that is fearful because he doesn't understand it. Would you like me to tell you the story?"

It was strange, but she had peeked my curiosity. "Sure."

"You know that my name is Astrid and the name of my husband is Hiccup, right?"

I nodded. "The names of our ancestors right?"

"Yes. Well, it was around 600 years ago. Our tribe, the Hairy Hooligan tribe, had been settled in Berk for 300 years. And for that whole time we had a large problem. You see Berk had a pest problem. In other places their pests were things like mosquitoes or mice. But Berk was special. Our pest problem was… Dragons…"

I looked at her like she had three heads. "Dragons? You're pulling my leg," I said. I was sure of it too. Sure I knew vampires were real, but dragons… that was a stretch even for me.

She nodded. "Charlie said the same thing when I told him the story. But it isn't. And I can show you."

"Show me?"

She nodded and led me to another entrance and down the stairs. "Bella this is the captain's quarters."

"Your room?"

"Yes," she said as she opened the door.

"Wait, won't you husband mind…?"

"Oh no, don't worry Bella. He doesn't mind." She led me into the room, closing the door behind us. "Now I'm getting ahead of myself of course. At the end of the story the dragons actually became friends for our people all thanks to Hiccup who later became known as the _**'Dragon Master'**_. And this Bella, is Hiccup's best friend, and the one who started it all. Toothless." The room had been in shadow and then a massive piece of it separated into the form or a gigantic black thing. I took a step back in fear. What was it? Astrid reached out and scratched the creature under its chin, then looked back at me and smiled. "Don't worry Bella. He won't hurt you." I nodded but was still unsure. "Toothless has been the alpha dragon of Berk for 600 years now and its guardian. Toothless, meet Bella, one of Hiccup's descendants." The beast rose on its feet and stepped towards me. I took a step back for every one he took forward. "Relax Bella. He won't hurt you." Astrid tried to comfort me. The creature stopped a few feet away from me as my back hit the wall and cocked his head. It was then I got a look into his eyes. They were large and clear. I could read the curiosity and intelligence there, but I didn't see anything threatening.

I took a deep breath. _I can do this,_ I told myself. _I snuggled with a vampire that thirsted for my blood every night. I can do this too. _

"Hi… Hi Toothless," I said reaching out a tentative hand. He sat on his haunches and grinned with his tongue hanging to the side. I seriously could not help the giggle that escaped me and it made me relax. "Can I pet him?" I asked her.

Astrid smiled at me. "Of course. And if you like, he loves getting his chin scratched," she told me. I didn't waste any time and reached out to the dragon who in turn reached his great head out to me and placed it against my palm. I was confused. "Don't worry. It's how dragons say they want to be friends. Go ahead and pet him." And I did. His skin felt a little rough and dry against my skin. But the skin under his chin was soft. He purred against me, like a giant car engine, obviously he liked being petted. I giggled and continued to pet him. Astrid handed me a bottle of water. I looked at her confused. "It's for him. Dragon skin is dry when you pour water on them they enjoy it." I nodded and did as she said and Toothless purred louder. Then she handed me a fish. "Want to feed him?" she asked.

"Can I?"

"Sure, here, he likes Salmon." I took the fish from her hand and held it out to the dragon, who took it from my hand and swallowed it in one bite.

"Does he really breathe fire?" I wondered. I knew there were legends that were false, I had dated one, and I was curious to know what was true about dragons as well.

"Yes. Toothless, can you light the fire?" He nodded and shot a white ball and the logs in the fireplace burst into flames as soon as it touched it. I couldn't help but jump and Astrid giggled. "Sorry, I should have warned you. Dragon fire is different with all dragon species. The Night Fury's fire is a blast of concentrated plasma and they can control how much or how little they use."

"Night Fury? Is that what he is?"

She nodded. "Yes, Toothless is a Night Fury. And the only one in the world."

That made me sad, he was all alone. "He's the last of his kind?"

She nodded. "We believe so given that for over 600 years no one has seen another like him. Now not every dragon lives as long as he has. Some can live for the lifetime of a person. Others can last several centuries, and we also believe that some may be everlasting."

"Everlasting? You mean Immortal, right?"

"Sort of. Viking lore and tales much older than that claim immortals cannot be destroyed by anything other than immortal means but those that are everlasting can die from things like disease, poison or the 4 elements of nature, particularly fire, but time won't kill them. Would you like to continue our walk?"

I nodded. "Can he come?" I wondered, having a little girl moment who just wanted to play with the fantasy made real. You know first vampires and now dragons; I was starting to wonder if any of the fairytales were actually a myth.

She smiled, and nodded. "Charlie's asleep so I was actually also coming down to let him out to stretch his legs a bit, so of course." I looked at her strangely. She nodded. "Yep, this is what your father fears, dragons. He's petrified of them so we've had to keep him inside the cabin while he's awake. Actually when you were little you had loved the dragons and would always want to play with them, and of course they with you, so I'm glad to see Charlie's irrational fear has not passed on to you as they years passed."

I was confused. "Were you there when I was here last?"

She nodded. "Yes. My husband and I actually helped care for you while you were sick. I was your nurse and he one of your doctors. While it's true that he is the chief of the village we both also do other duties. He works as a doctor for our people and also as an inventor and a dragon vet. I'm a nurse and also a teacher, and we both run the dragon academy."

"Dragon academy?"

She nodded. "Where we teach students how to train dragons. It's actually all part of the story." I nodded and she continued the tale as we walked the deck. "So to us, back then the dragons were a menace and we had been at war with them for 300 years. We feared them you see. They raided our village for food, burnt it down and killed many of our people. But then we had also killed many of them as well. At that time the village chief was Stoick the Vast, and he was Hiccup's father. Stoick was a great Viking warrior and an accomplished dragon killer. At the time all dragons were for the killing… All but one… The Night Fury. No one that ever met a Night Fury and lived to tell the tale and so they were feared above all others and left alone. Hiccup, your ancestor, was different from the rest of the boys in the village. He was slight, thin and wiry, whereas all the other boys had been big and strapping, and muscular, like all Viking men. He was also well, a klutz and could barely lift a sword let alone use it. He tried so hard to fit in, to be a dragon killer like everyone else, but it was like every time he stepped out the door, a disaster would happen. He had always been branded as an embarrassment to the tribe, and even to his father, although his father did love him. He couldn't help it though, Hiccup was different, he had been meant for more. What he lacked in muscle he made up for it in strength of mind. He was, basically, a genius, but in a world made for only the tough warrior alpha male type where thinking was considered a waste of time, he didn't fit in. But he did find something to do, as the blacksmith's apprentice. One night there was a dragon raid on the village and all the warrior went out to defend it. Fires started and the teens were supposed to contain them, those were Astrid and Hiccup's other friends, though admittedly at the time they weren't very nice to him.

"Hiccup left his house, and everyone that saw him told him to get back inside, including his father. He ran to the blacksmith's shop to help fix the weapons that were needed. He did try to sneak out to fight a dragon; after all killing a dragon was a status symbol amongst all of us then. But the Blacksmith, Gobber, a friend of his father's didn't let him leave. Now Gobber too was a great dragon killer. He knew more about them than anyone which was why he had trained many a young Viking to kill dragons. Soon he was needed and he told Hiccup to stay put. But of course he didn't. Now Hiccup being so smart, had made inventions to help him do what he didn't have the strength to do, like throwing bolas to tie up the dragons. And it worked. He knew that if he had been the first to kill a Night Fury, he would basically be set for life so he went to the cliffs and waited for a chance. The Night Fury had been attacking the catapults. He attacked one that was empty and that was when Hiccup shot him with the bola shooter and actually succeeded in catching the dragon who went down just behind one of the ridges. However a Monstrous Nightmare had seen him and went after him and Hiccup ran screaming. Good thinking too, because the Monstrous Nightmare was one of the worst dragons to deal with. His father heard his screams and went to save him, but the dragon destroyed one of the giant blazing torches that were used to help scare of the dragons and caused a lot of damage to the village. He tried to tell them what he'd done but no one believed him, not even his father, nor the other teens in the village, Fishlegs, Snotlout, Ruffnut, Tuffnut and Astrid the girl he was in love with and who later became his wife.

"But Hiccup would not take things laying down and so he left his house in search of the dragon. He spent all night and nearly all the next day trying to find it, but everywhere he looked was a bust. Until, by chance, he happened upon the trail of destruction left behind by the dragons crash and found him all tied up near a grove. Now that he had found him, he had decided to kill the dragon and take his heart back to his father, and then he would be a Viking, a real Viking. But the two locked eyes with one another and in that moment it was like they could see each other's souls. You see, when a dragon chooses to give you his complete trust he looks into your soul and when they mirror each other you are basically bonded for life with a life-long friend who would always have your back. That dragon will die to protect you, will kill to defend you and would be your most loyal companion for as long as he or you live. Of course none of that was known then, but that didn't change the facts. Hiccup later told Astrid that he could read the fear in the dragon's eyes, fear that mirrored his own and found he could not hurt him, could not kill him. And so he set the dragon free. The dragon roared in his face and flew away. When Hiccup returned home he found his father packing. He was leading the people on another search for the dragon nest so that if it was destroyed then the dragons would leave. And Stoic gave Hiccup an ultimatum. The Viking Academy was opening again and he was going to learn to kill dragons. Hiccup tried to tell his father that he could not kill them, but it was of no use. His father would not listen and so Hiccup had no choice but to learn to fight dragons. His father and many of the villagers left, and hopefully they would return since most ships never came back from trying to find the nest.

"The next day Gobber led the teens into the arena and began their lessons. Now his teaching method was to throw the kids in the lion's den and hope they could swim. He instructed them as they scrambled to stay ahead of the dragon. And Hiccup ended up being as bad as expected. However, he did learn a valuable lesson, the first that made him wonder about the truth behind the dragons: **dragons always, ALWAYS, go for the kill.** But the Night Fury had not. That afternoon, Hiccup went in search of the dragon and found him in a the grove, not far from where he had last seen him. He observed him, even drew him, but kept wondering why he didn't fly away. They locked eyes again and again continued to bond. As the days passed Hiccup failed again and again in the arena but spent his afternoons watching the dragon. He decided to befriend him and brought him a fish when he realized the dragon was starving. The dragon, whom he had named Toothless for his unusual ability to hide his teeth when not needed, took the fish from his hand and they spent and afternoon together, Hiccup trying to approach him with little success though the dragon tolerated his presence. Even drawing together in the sand. Yes drawing, Toothless used a tree branch to draw squiggles in the sand and while Hiccup looked at the drawing he unintentionally drew closer to the dragon until they were an arm's length away. Hiccup tried to touch him but in the end, by letting the dragon choose to touch his hand, like you did with Toothless, Toothless came to him and placed his great head against his hand and purred. And their bond was sealed. While observing him, Hiccup had noticed that Toothless was missing one of his tail wings, probably happened during the crash, and without that he could not fly. In his next lesson, Hiccup learned that when you wanted to kill a dragon you went for the wings and the tail because without them the dragon could not fly. And a downed dragon was a dead dragon. So Hiccup now knew his friend was in big trouble.

"But Hiccup was smart, a mechanical genius far ahead of his time actually and so he worked to solve the problem. The tail wing was gone, but Hiccup created a new one in the blacksmith shop. Here I'll show you." Astrid took Toothless's tail and showed me that indeed one of the small wing-like fins on the tail was missing. "Hiccup created a prosthetic tail wing, though even after the actual wing was made it was still trial and error to get the dragon to fly again. Weeks went by and they worked on the problem together, and while doing that Hiccup learned more and more about dragons like: they're afraid of eels and this he later learned that it was because when eaten eels cause in dragons a disease called eel pox that gives them very high fevers, so high they hallucinate and explosive coughs that makes their fire go out of control and if not treated quickly they can hurt themselves badly and it's fatal without treatment. People can get it with the same results, though not from eating eel. He also learned they liked a plant we later called dragon nip and all he learned from the dragons themselves he used in the arena to help himself and also protect the dragons that were trapped there from injury. To the people the turnaround was amazing, but not to Astrid. She had always been the top student and with Hiccup's dramatic change now he was competing with her to be the top student and earn the right to kill a dragon in front of the whole village. Now Hiccup and Toothless finally found the answer; to get Toothless to fly, they would have to fly together and Hiccup would control the prosthesis. It took time but they eventually succeeded and it was then that Hiccup came to another realization: **Everything that Vikings knew about dragons was wrong.** The next day was the final challenge and as expected Hiccup and Astrid were competing for the price, Hiccup rather unwillingly, succeeded, he passed and was chosen to kill the dragon. Something he could not do. So Hiccup decided to run away with Toothless and packed then went to the grove where Toothless lived so they could leave together, never to return…

"But Hiccup was not aware that Astrid had been watching him the whole time and had followed him. When he realized she was right behind him he tried to back pedal, to keep his secret but when Toothless thought she would hurt his friend it was all over. He attacked her and Hiccup stepped in between them stopping both of them from fighting. Astrid could not believe it, Hiccup was a traitor because he kept a pet dragon and dragons were the enemy. She ran meaning, to tell everyone, but Hiccup and Toothless caught her. Together they showed her what things were really like, and they had a very romantic flight together too. Then Toothless heard something, it was later learned that it was the call of the alpha, the queen of the nest, a call that he could not ignore so they joined the other dragons in flying back to the nest with the food they had gotten. And they tossed it all down a hole, but did not eat any of it. And then they saw why when a dragon failed to bring back enough food. From out of the gloom rose a massive dragon as big as a mountain, that was later named the Red Death. And that dragon ate the poor helpless Gronkle that had not brought enough food back for it. It smelled them though and Toothless escaped with his friends and the other dragons, though a Zippleback was eaten. They flew back to Berk and Astrid was all set to tell Hiccup's father, who had come back the day before and had seen his son's triumph, where the dragon nest was, the thing they had been searching for, for 300 years but Hiccup would not let her because if they did Toothless would be killed. She understood and asked what they were going to do, especially since his final exam was the next day. He asked her to give him until then. The next day the people waited for Hiccup to take his exam and kill his first dragon. Hiccup had chosen the only thing he could, to show them what dragons were really like. When the Monstrous Nightmare was let out to fight him, Hiccup threw his weapons away and tried to reach out to him. The dragon was willing but the noise made by Stoic as he banged his hammer against the cage and screamed to stop the fight scared and enraged the dragon and he attacked Hiccup. Both Stoic and Astrid tried to help him, but at the same time Toothless sensed what was wrong with his friend and escaped the grove he lived in and raced all the way into Berk and into the arena to fight the Nightmare and save Hiccup. Which he did, but in so doing revealed to all the truth between them. And no one was any pleased especially Stoic. He ordered for the dragon to be caged with the others and dragged his son away to talk.

"He was furious. Everything he had thought he could have pride in, was a lie. In their argument Hiccup inadvertently revealed that he had been to the nest and only Toothless could find it. Stoic heard none of his son's warnings about the monstrous dragon there. He called his son a traitor and disowned him, leaving him where he had tossed him. He ordered his people to ready the ships and they tied Toothless up and took him away so the dragon would lead them home. It was hopeless. Hiccup stood watching them leave unable to stop them and Astrid came to him. He wondered to himself why he couldn't kill the dragon and in her questioning she got him to understand why: he wouldn't kill him because he was as frightened as he was, that he had seen himself in the eyes of that dragon. She knew Toothless was probably frightened now and asked what he would do; getting him to do what only he could do: save their people. And Hiccup ran off to work. She, meanwhile, gathered the other teens, their friends, and they followed him to the arena where Hiccup taught them how to train dragons. They mounted the dragons and set off after the ships. Meanwhile the people had arrived at the nest, Toothless unwittingly leading them there. They used catapults to crack the mountain open and in so doing all the dragons flew away, but they had really released the monster within and that's why the dragons had escaped. When the Red Death appeared before them, Stoic knew he'd been a fool. The dragon destroyed their ships and without them the people were doomed, their weapons useless against the beast. He was going to use himself as bait to buy them some time to get away, but it was not necessary. For at that very moment the teens arrived on their dragon steeds, Hiccup leading them. They flew into action fighting off the creature while Hiccup searched the burning ships for his friend. Finding him, he tried to free him but the Red Death stepped on the ship destroying it and the two sank. Hiccup continued trying but was running out of air. His father had gone into the water and pulled him out then dove back in for the dragon, their one and only hope.

"Toothless in turned pulled him out of the water as he flew out and asked his friend to mount; he was ready for the fight. Stoic and Hiccup hashed things out before Hiccup flew up to fight the dragon whom by then had defeated the other teens. Together Hiccup and Toothless fought the dragon blasting its wings apart and then as they dove down and the dragon got ready to breathe fire again Toothless ignited the gas that formed the fire and created an explosion within it. With uncontrolled fire inside and shredded wings, the Red Death could not pull out of the dive and crashed into the island exploding on impact. Hiccup and Toothless had flown out of the way but Toothless tail wing had caught on fire and the leather had burned away so they could not control their flight and slammed into the tail of the beast. It knocked them apart and Hiccup was unconscious and falling into the fire. Toothless tossed himself after him as they were engulfed in flames. When the smoke settled, Stoic desperately looked for his son, fear in his heart. He found Toothless unconscious where he had slammed into the ground, his saddle shredded, his tail wing destroyed, and Hiccup nowhere to be found. Stoic fell to his knees then, his son was gone. It was then that Toothless awoke and saw him. Stoic apologized for everything; his own foolishness had made his son pay the ultimate price. When he apologized, Toothless opened his wings and showed what he had clutched in his embrace. Hiccup, unconscious, tucked safely against him. Stoic took him in his arms and listened for a heartbeat, and found one to his great joy. The dragon had brought his boy back alive. The people and the dragons rejoiced as Stoic thank Toothless for bringing Hiccup back alive. Well, most of him. Hiccup's left leg was damaged beyond repair and so it had to be amputated and Gobber created a peg leg for him. Days later, Hiccup awoke at home, Toothless by his side, and with his friend's help took his first steps with the peg leg as they headed to the door.

"At the door he found a Monstrous Nightmare and slammed it closed only to afterwards step out to see… A changed Berk. There were dragons everywhere and the people were welcoming them instead of fighting them. They were riding them instead of killing them. And Hiccup was sure it meant he was dead. Then the people noticed that he was outside, they raced to welcome the conquering hero, his father reaching him first to explain that he wasn't dead, that it was real. It turned out that all they needed was something to shake things up, to help change Berk for the better. Gobber explained about the peg leg and handed him the new tail wing he had made form Hiccup's own design as Toothless stepped out of the house. And together he and the other teen dragon riders flew to race over the town." She sighed with a smile. "Hiccup was now a hero, we before he had been less than a zero. He and his friends had many adventures even defeating dreaded enemies of Berk with the help of their dragons and establishing the Dragon Academy, and 5 years later, he and Astrid were to be wed, Berk was new and better, made better by his design to be good for people and dragons, when a new enemy threatened to destroy it all. Another man was building a dragon army. Hiccup learned of it as he was flying with Toothless to map the world and find more dragons… and perhaps another Night Fury. That particular day he was escaping his father's dreaded wish, to make Hiccup the new chief. Astrid joined him on the new island they discovered and together discovered the den of dragon trappers and learned of Drago Bloodfist, the man building an army of enslaved dragons. Hiccup brought the warning back to Berk and his father went ballistic, he had known Drago and knew the man would not be reasoned with, but Hiccup had to try so he and Astrid flew to meet the trappers. But Stoic had led the other riders to follow and find him and after subduing the trappers, who were really more of a nuisance than anything else, Stoic told the story of how he met Drago, how the man had explained that he controlled dragons and that they had to pledge alliance to him. They had laughed at him and paid the price. Armored dragons had crashed the hall where all the chieftains were and only Stoic had escaped the massive fire. Hiccup, however, would not be swayed. He saw himself as a peace keeper between humans and dragons and felt that if he could change Stoic's mind, he could change Drago's and so he flew off again to find this enemy. Stoic sent Astrid and the other riders back home while he and Gobber tracked Hiccup. As he flew, Hiccup raged at his father, and then felt someone following, thinking it was his father, who now too rode dragons, he turned to continue the fight, but it wasn't Stoic. It was another dragon rider, and he realized that this had been the one that had blasted the dragon trappers' fort to splinters. The dragons flying with it took Hiccup hostage and let Toothless fall to the water, though later rescued him.

"The rider took Hiccup back to its nest which was filled with dragons unknown to him and so he used his dragon sword, the one he had created to have a blade that would burst into flames and would shoot jets of gas he could spark from the other end of the hilt to help show the dragons he was a friend. This surprised the rider then approached him, and actually recognized him. She took off her helmet and touched the scar on Hiccup's chin. She told him she was Valka, his mother, and explained that she had not been eaten by dragons as the people believed but that the night of the attack, when he was but a babe, she had gone to defend him when a dragon had broken into the house and had her beliefs about the truth of dragons confirmed as the dragon played gently with him. A fire broke out as Stoic came to rescue them and the dragon had taken her away with him to the nest, probably thinking that she belonged there with them as her soul had reflected his. She hadn't meant to leave him but thought it would be for the best, that he would be safer that way since she could not kill dragons. Like mother like son, she too had been different, because she like Hiccup had been born with the soul of a dragon. They exchanged stories and all they knew. She even showed him the secret that his dragon kept and taught him more about his best friend. While they were spending time together and learning about each other, Stoic found where Toothless had crashed into the ice in the ocean and found the helmet of Hiccup's glide suit. It was then that Stoic and Gobber knew something was wrong and had his dragon track them. They found the nest and Hiccup while he and Toothless were alone and dragged him out as Hiccup tried to explain to his father what he had found. But then they stepped into the great cavern of the nest and there Stoic saw Valka after 20 years. She tried to explain herself away, feeling he was probably angry with her for leaving them, but all he saw was a gift from the gods, his wife returned to him from the dead after so many years. Together the family enjoyed a reunion and Stoic convinced Valka to return with them. Meanwhile, Hiccup's friends were getting worried. They had not returned to Berk but waited at about half way. Time passed and neither Stoic nor Hiccup returned and Astrid was growing more and more worried. She thought Drago had taken them so she led the others to find the trapper who worked for him and forced him to lead them to Drago. But it had been a mistake. Drago had not taken them, didn't even know about them, but took them and their dragons hostage and inadvertently they revealed that Berk was full of dragon riders and that Hiccup was the Dragon Master. Drago chose to go find Hiccup and defeat him before setting off to destroy Berk.

"The Haddock family's reunion over dinner was cut short when Drago attacked the nest. And the foursome plus Toothless joined the Great Bewilder Beast, the alpha of the nest, a massive dragon bigger than the Red Death Hiccup had defeated, to fight the invaders. But Drago had a surprise up his sleeve, another Bewilder Beast, a young challenger for the alpha status. As the riders fought Drago's army and freed the dragons the two beasts fought for control of the nest and the smaller dragons and Drago faced off against Stoic and Hiccup. Hiccup tried to get Drago to see reason but the man would not be swayed and fought them. Stoic faced him and they fought while Valka tried to stop the Bewilder Beasts from fighting. But it was no use. The young challenger defeated Valka's old alpha and took control of all the dragons in the nest, including Toothless. Given that Drago controlled the Alpha he had the alpha order Toothless to kill his own friend. Hiccup tried in vain to help his friend snap out of it, but no dragon could refuse the alpha's command. Toothless, not knowing what he did, fired a lethal blast at his own best friend. But Stoic had seen it all and had been running to help his son; he pushed his son out of the way and took the blast meant for his son, dying instantly. Once the order was carried out, the alpha released Toothless from his trance to see his family bent over the body of Stoic. Toothless had killed him. In his grief, Hiccup blamed his friend and told him to leave, just as Drago had his alpha round up all the dragons, now they were going for Berk. Toothless too was powerless under the command and Drago took him as well riding him to Berk. Valka comforted her son, reminding him that it had not been Toothless's fault, that good dragons controlled by evil men do horrible things. With broken hearts, Hiccup and his friends and family prepared a hasty funeral for their fallen chief. In Viking tradition, he was laid to rest on a ship and sent to sail away on his final journey. As Gobber finished the farewell eulogy for the great chief, Hiccup, his mother and his friends shot flaming arrows at the ship to set it on fire and send him on his way to Valhalla.

"And now a great burden fell on Hiccup's young shoulders. His people were in danger, and he was their new chief. With his friends and his mother by his side, Hiccup rode the baby dragons that had been left behind since they were immune to the control of the alpha back home to Berk. Meanwhile, Drago attacked Berk, destroying much of the island during the night. By dawn's light, Berk had been submitted, their own dragons taken by the alpha. But then Hiccup and the riders arrived to save them to the great joy of the people. Hiccup faced off against Drago trying to get Toothless back. Drago laughed at him because he knew no dragon could ignore the command of the alpha and invited him to try, he wouldn't miss this time. Hiccup reached out to his friend, breaking through to the heart of his beloved dragon and freeing him from the command of the alpha. It shocked Drago who hit Toothless with his spear, but Toothless threw him off of him and fell from the sky. Mid-fall Hiccup and Toothless reunited, Hiccup taking his rightful seat on the saddle and together they flew off to fight Drago. As they fought, Drago ordered his dragon to attack Hiccup and the Beast blasted them with his ice breath meaning to freeze Hiccup. At the last second, Toothless tossed himself into the blast wrapping himself around Hiccup as the blast connected and the two were frozen in a pillar of ice seemingly lost forever…

"But then a great blast of plasma blasted apart ice to reveal, Toothless and Hiccup alive and well and together as one. Toothless left Hiccup's side and faced the Alpha, challenging him to a fight for the alpha rights. He was doing it for his master, to protect those that were his to protect. Toothless was so filled with rage that he glowed with the color of his plasma and his blasts were greater than any he had ever done before. He blasted the beast over and over again destroying one of its great tusks and defeating it with the help of the other dragons who had too broken free of the alpha and returned to their rightful masters. The beast backed away defeated and with it Drago was defeated too. Because that was what meant to win a dragon's loyalty, they would face the demons of hell if they had to for those they loved. Toothless landed amongst the dragons who bowed to him, the new alpha and then Hiccup was crowned chief of the village. Over time, Berk was rebuilt and better than ever. Years passed, many threats came and where swiftly dispatched. But one lay amongst them unknown to all. There was one of the dragon riders, one of Hiccup's own friends who envied and hated the young chief. Hiccup had married Astrid and they'd had 7 children. Fifteen years passed before the snake in their midst revealed itself. When their youngest was 4, Snotlout, who had always been jealous of Hiccup, especially after he had married Astrid, finally mounted his assault on Berk. He, like Drago, had raised an army of dragons and had caught the chief unawares. The attack was swift and rootless, and in the end Hiccup had been defeated. He was shipped off along his fighters, and his children, but Snotlout was going to keep his wife for himself. Astrid fought him and escaped but in the madness than ensued their youngest daughter Evangeline, who was only 4 years old, was taken captive by Snotlout. Both parents vowed to return and save them all…

"Time passed and eventually they found the land in Alaska that they had conquered and made a camp there, where later most of their people escaped to, those that could at least. Hiccup and Astrid continued to try to help their people and save their baby, but then they mysteriously disappeared… Ten years later, they returned. Their oldest daughter, 20 year old Mirana was now chief and she rejoiced to see them, but her parents were not the same. They explained that assassins sent by Snotlout had kidnapped them and killed them far enough away that no one ever would find them. Without a proper burial they were doomed to wonder the earth as nothing more than wraiths. But the gods had been merciful on the pair. The great god Thor had come to them upon the moment of their death and gave them Odin's decree… They would be tried and they would know great sorrow in the afterlife, but if they held firm and succeeded in conquering their trials they would return to the earth with the strength of the gods and made immortal, to defend their people and protect the dragons… And they had succeeded which was why now they had returned. With them also was Toothless who too had disappeared he had seen his masters taken and followed them to rescue them but had been unable. He could not follow them through their trials but had waited for them and at the end of it they were reunited with the alpha. The people rejoiced, such a great gift from the gods… Now with their returned true chief they could take back their home. And they did. The warriors returned to the island led by their immortal chief and defeated Snotlout, but he had one last trick up his sleeve…

"Ten years had passed and Evangeline had grown into a beautiful young girl. Snotlout had forcefully taken her as his wife and now 14 year old Evangeline was pregnant with his child. She gave birth to a son that looked just like her father just before he returned to save her. When Hiccup and Astrid returned they learned the fate of their little daughter, but Snotlout's cruelty knew no bounds. When he found himself defeated against the might of the now god-like true chief he took his sword and dragged little Evangeline out onto the plaza though she had given birth mere hours earlier. Before either of her parents could react, his sword was thrust through her heart and her head was separated from her shoulders. They had defeated him, recovered their home and saved their people and the dragons… But they had failed. Their baby now lay dead at their feet. In rage Hiccup killed her murderer, but nothing would bring back his precious baby. In his grief, Toothless shot a great blast of plasma into the sky over Berk where it remains to this day, the star of Evangeline where it is said the little angel's soul lives watching over the island."

That was such a sad tale. I wished there had been a happy ending, but then maybe there was. Come to think of it. The story said they were immortals, and given what I know… perhaps they were still around. "That was so sad. Whatever happened to them?" I asked.

"No one knows. Hiccup led his people for many years before passing the chiefdom to one of his descendants. After that he and Astrid disappeared. Though Toothless remained on the island. Of course it is an oral tradition. While much of it is obviously true, Toothless is, after all, standing right beside you; it has probably been blown out of proportion with each retelling during the last 600 years."

I nodded. That I was well aware of given what I knew about vampires. However it was possible that they were still around. I knew that well. I was suddenly filled with curiosity and wished to know more about my ancestors, hell I wanted to see if I could find them, if they were still alive. Hmm, it was a big world and I had to wonder how to find them. "So the tradition of the chief taking the name of the ancestors whey they become chief is to honor the great ancestor?"

She shrugged. "In all honesty, I'm not sure where it came from. It's just something we do." Odd answer that one. Still the explanation was probably lost to time long ago. It was then that there was a break in the clouds and the moon's light shown on the deck. I was amazed at the size of the stars. I had honestly never seen them that clearly before. "Noticed the stars I see." I nodded. "Stars are never clearer than out in the ocean, it's why sailors of old used them to navigate by, even with all of today's gadgets to help, stars are still the most reliable way to navigate both on the sea and in the land. GPS, sonar, etc. they can fail. They can be damaged. But stars are always there to help guide you home." She pointed at a rather large blue one in the distance. "Do you see that large star in the horizon?"

"The blue one?"

She nodded. "Yes. That star is more or less directly over the Barbarian Archipelago where Berk resides. In fact it is more or less directly over Berk."

"The star of Evangeline."

She nodded. "Correct. The Archipelago is uncharted except for in very old Viking maps that illustrate the fabled island. The reason the modern world discounts the archipelago as a myth is that first; historians have the location wrong. It's not in the Atlantic Ocean but in the Pacific, specifically in the Bering Sea. And second, this part of the ocean is dangerous to sail in, even fly in. It has been considered a no sail no fly zone for centuries since its discovery because the archipelago itself is surrounded by a sea of volcanic vents that shoot out boiling steam and on occasion lava out of the water, even in between some of the islands, that severely endanger passing ships unless you know where to sail. And planes have tried passing over it, but with the weather changes created by the unusual ocean currents, plus the cold of this particular latitude which is just below the Arctic Circle make it too dangerous to fly. You see Bella, there are pathways where there are no volcanic vents where it is safe to traverse by sea and only by sea because planes would have to be specially made to withstand the temperatures, however only those that have sailed these seas for centuries know where they are. We call it Helheim's Gate for a reason. In Norse mythology it is the gateway to the realm of hell and to traverse in any but safe route is to walk barefoot into hell."

"But why not let people now know?"

"Many others have asked the same question, but Bella. These islands are the last true refuge for dragons. Sure we do theorize that there may be other places too extreme for people to enter or too unknown where dragons may still be found like the most northern latitudes or the Amazon which is mostly uncharted. And in the past we have considered allowing the knowledge of our existence to the outside world, but we dare not. We consider it our most sacred duty to protect dragons and this is the last known place where they thrive. You know obviously the stories of other places where it was said dragons had lived, and the people feared them, hunted them and killed them. While that was centuries ago, it could still happen. For example, the Amazon is supposedly protected, and yet deforestation is growing at an alarming rate and destroying the habitats of animals that become extinct before they are even known. Because dragons are fairly old creatures, we believe them to be about as old if not older than the dinosaurs with whom they do share several traits, they may or may not be able to adapt. Most of the islands have long since become uninhabited though there used to be other tribal settlements previously. Those tribes have either died out, merged with us or left never to return and we have labored hard to keep the islands protected so that dragons have a place to call home. Without those habitats they could be lost within a generation and "progress" would demand that more and more land be taken from them to their detriment as many other species are suffering now. Also, dragons would be considered threatened species if not highly endangered and other species facing the same problems are still hunted. Tigers, rhinos, elephants, and so on and so forth, are hunted left, right and center for what people believe is valuable about them, but the life they take was what was invaluable. Sport hunters would hunt them to extinction, even illegally, just for the ultimate trill and we do know that parts of dragons like teeth and scales are very useful, but we don't kill them for it. They molt scales constantly. It's why Toothless's skin feels rough, he's getting ready to shed scales and we gather them when they are shed and use them. Dragons loose teeth all the time, they are like sharks in that they can replace them over time so we gather the lost teeth and use them, but no one else would do the same as killing them is much easier than harvesting."

"That's why Charlie said he took an oath of secrecy," I realized understanding why she was explaining this. I too would have to take the oath and honestly I would even if I wasn't asked. So much was beautiful about this world; it would be a shame to have it lost. Besides I held the biggest secret in the world, the existence of vampires, close within my breast and that secret would never leave my lips, it wasn't mine to tell and it was that secret that the lives of those I loved the most depended on so I kept it locked up in my heart. If this world depended on secrets, then the secret was safe in my hands; I would keep it close as I kept close his.

She nodded. "Yes. And we now have to ask the same of you. I'm sure you understand the importance of the secret."

"To keep the last remnant of dragons safe, of course. And you have my word. Whatever I learn will not leave my lips," I swore, turning to look at her in the eyes so she knew I spoke the truth...

And at that moment, as I turned to look at her, the moon, who had previously hidden again in the clouds though we could still see the stars, decided to make an appearance. I could see clearly all details freed from the gloom of night. And the moon spotlighted my companion. She was indeed as lovely as I thought her to be. With ultra-pale skin and long blonde hair caught up in a braid… … … and**Golden Eyes**… …

That was it; I had finally lost my marbles. And if that was the case, I was okay with it. '_It'll be as if I had never existed, I promise.'_ HE had said, and I was beginning to believe that to be true. He had left me no proof, no glimpse into the life of before to remind me that the pain now was because of the joy then. And here in the middle of the ocean, was proof however tenuous. I had never thought I would stare into a golden gaze again, and though it wasn't the one I wanted, here I was looking into the eyes of a vampire. I was shocked that I took a step back with a gasp. I felt the solid form of Toothless at my back as I stepped away from the vampire. "Golden eyes…" I whispered.

She nodded, "Yes Bella, my eyes are gold. I know it's a little shocking at first but…"

"Gold eyes… Immortal… Vampire," I muttered trying to wrap my head around it. I had thought it would never happen again, but here I was in the presence of a vampire. Someone up there must really be getting a kick out of this, like dangling a carrot in front of a poor, starving bunny.

It was her turn to take a step back with a gasp. Her face as hard as a stone, though I could see in her eyes the fear, and the knowledge. "What, Bella, sweetie are you…"

"Don't bother to lie. I know the truth. My ex-boyfriend was a vampire and I knew about him," I told her. Okay so I was being stupid, cornering an unknown vampire and confronting her with the knowledge I had. She could decide to get rid of me now, but I wouldn't stop. I needed that proof. At least now I knew what really happened to my ancestors; here she was, I was sure of it.

Her face became a mask of stone, knowing there was no point in denying what I knew. "How long have you known?"

"About you? Just now when I saw your eyes finally. The other time's I'd seen you, you'd been standing near lights that kept your eyes in shadow. About him? Months."

"And they let you live?" she was asking herself. Then nodded. "Okay look, Bella, I'm not going to hurt you, but I think we need to start this from the very beginning. Clearly, there is much we don't know about you, child." I nodded, relaxing. She led to a covered patio on the deck where we sat and I began my tale. I told her about how I had met him in school, how I had found out what he was and confronted him and we had begun to date, how his family, most of them anyway, had welcomed me into the fold. I told her about the baseball game and the run from James and how he'd lured me to the ballet studio where Edward had saved me. Then I told her about that all too brief summer and my birthday and the events that followed. I left out only one detail… one I was unwilling to acknowledge even to myself, it hurt too much. I even told her about how I felt now that he had abandoned me, about the pain in my chest and how I could hardly draw breath just to live. At the end I found myself in her embrace as she rocked me in her lap like a child, not really knowing when I had gotten there but grateful for the comfort it provided. I felt lighter. I guess it's true what they say that pain shared is pain lessened and here was someone who was safe for me to talk to, so I laid it all out there for her. She in turn explained that yes she was my ancestral mother the true Astrid Haddock and her husband whom I had yet to meet truly was my ancestral father. She told me what had really happened the night they had disappeared.

"The night that we disappeared, Hiccup and I had tucked the children into bed and then staid up to continue planning. We believed our only hope would be another Night Fury or perhaps training and alpha species. But we'd have to find it. At some point movement in the room caught my attention but by then it was too late. My husband was looking out the window into the night and I saw the reflection of him in a mirror. A shadow separated itself from the night and grabbed him, pulling him out the window. By the time I turned around he was gone. Toothless and I ran out after him, leaving old Gobber with the children. Whatever had taken Hiccup it was inhumanly fast, and Toothless and I quickly lost sight of them but he tracked them by scent. We followed the trail for days and nights until we lost it because of the rain. We continued to search for weeks with no luck. We flew over the North American forests searching for weeks, crossing half of what is now the continental US until we happened upon a Native camp that was in an uproar. Now I didn't know the language, but there clearly was something wrong. We had made it a point to avoid the natives as much as possible but, desperate to find my husband, we staid to watch. And I saw him. It was Hiccup and a few others with skin as pale as ours so we knew they weren't native and they were killing people. Well really, the others were killing them, Hiccup was trembling. And I had never seen my husband tremble. I didn't think about it. Toothless dove out of the sky and blasted them sending them scattering but they returned before we landed. It was then that I finally got a good look at them. They were in dark hooded robes and they were so beautiful I thought for a moment they were gods, but their eyes were red. They grabbed Hiccup holding him down as one of them, the one in the darkest robe called me by name. Clearly he knew me, though I had never seen him before.

"He introduced himself as Aro de Volturi just as I happened to finally catch a glimpse of my husband… and his red eyes. I could see the madness in them and the hunger. I ignored whatever the Aro creature said as I took several steps away from Toothless and approached my husband. But it was a mistake. I meant to save him and pulled my own sword and his out of my belt willing to shred the men that were holding onto him and save him, but then he broke free of them and attacked me. Now, Bella, you must understand, he was not in his right mind. I didn't know at the time that Aro had had him kidnapped and had turned him into a vampire because he wanted the dragon master as his own. Aro is a collector and his most prized pieces are his living treasures, vampires with unusual gifts that he forces into his service, so your own Edward and his family are actually in great danger from them. Hiccup was a newborn, barely weeks old at the time and insane with thirst. You see one of Aro's favored newborn training methods is to torture the poor creature by feeding around them but never let them feed. He had never been fed since his awakening and the poor man was insane with hunger. He's also allergic to human blood, it happens on occasion with some of our kind so that compounded his problem. All around him was food but the smell made him ill, and tasting it would have been worse. He was so insanely hungry that he attacked me without thinking, and I later learned that it had also been aggravated by the fact that my blood called to him like no other. I could feel his body trembling on top of me and I knew that he knew me, but he could not help it. Then they pulled him off of me, and I later learned that it was not to save me but because he had not earned the right to feed. Aro was pleased by the turn of events though. By pulling him off of me, they had allowed me to change so now Aro would have 2 dragon masters along with the most powerful dragon there was, and whom I saw had been subdued by several of the men and tied up with strong ropes the villagers had, much as had been done to him by my people many years earlier.

"I knew no more after that since the fire of the change had taken me, but Hiccup filled me in. Aro and his people dragged us back to their encampment in what is now Maine. They had taken over, ironically enough, a Viking village that was there at the time and had killed all of the people. They had, however, an arena for killing dragons though it had been generations since it had been used and there they chained Toothless with chains made specifically to hold dragons. Poor Toothless languished in those chains for days with no food or water. They would not let Hiccup near him and they didn't feed him either. Hiccup and I meanwhile were taken to the great hall where he was chained down with me right in front of him. I cannot begin to imagine what he went through for those three days that I burned, knowing he had been the one to put me in that position. When I awoke, I too was chained down and Hiccup told me what was going on. Then they came for us. Aro was pleased that I had awoken and introduced his brothers to me, Caius and Marcus. Then my torture began. I too was never fed despite the weeks that passed and I couldn't fathom hurting someone innocent. It took us two weeks to convince Aro to at least allow us to hunt animals to feed our dragon. He saw no problem with it, he wanted Toothless healthy so he would fight for him and allowed it. That was how we found out we could feed from animals. We hunted them to give the meat to Toothless but to hunt them we drank their blood. And it calmed our thirst. We kept that to ourselves though, otherwise we would not have been able to do it. The reason Aro would not feed us was because my husband and I both refused to train dragons to be his slaves. So he thought to break our wills by not feeding us, but we found a way around it. Time passed and we knew our people probably thought we were dead, but we planned our escape anyway. Toothless had regained his strength with the meat we fed him and we realized that the chains holding him were old so now that he was healthy we tore them apart, and together with him, we escaped killing much of Aro's army while we were at it.

"Of course we escaped the wrong way. We went into the sea meaning to return to the camp, not knowing at the time that we were in the wrong coast. We found ourselves after several days' travel, on the shores of Norway, our ancestral home. By chance three vampires were visiting the shore and we ran into them when we landed. Now we were fearful of them after what we had gone through but we noticed their eyes were different. They had golden eyes. It was so startling that we decided to speak to them. And it's a good thing we did. The vampires were elders, olden than the Romanians even. They were over 6,000 years old, the oldest amongst them had been an elder vampire when Sumeria was a small kingdom. They explained that their eyes were gold because they too fed from animals. When they realized that we were newborns, they took us in and taught us to survive. We learned so much from those elders and they helped us keep safe from Aro and his goons. They knew of our wish to return home and helped us device the plan that I told you about, but because we were so young we had to wait. It took 8 years to be ready to return and then another year to find our people but we did it. We've led our people all these centuries. Sure Hiccup has given the chiefdom over to our descendants, but it is still to us our people look to for guidance and we have actually done more than just protect dragons."

I looked at her confused. She grinned. "We aren't the only vampires on Berk, Bella. Though admittedly it is against Volturi law, though you can understand why we never follow it, for humans to know. Our people in Berk know the truth about us now. And we allow them to choose their own fates, if they want to be vampires they can become vampires. And other vampires have, over the years found their way to Berk. But we do have one rule. There is no feeding on the humans. We are all strictly vegetarian and we vanish or even kill those vampire that break our law. Our humans live alongside the vampires as friends and family, even lovers." Now that to me sounded like heaven, a word where I could know and not fear that knowledge. It broke my heart that Edward wasn't here so that I could show him a world where he could be himself and all that he is and no one would be afraid of him. "Over the years many of the families of Berk has left to live in the outside world and those lines are the ones that don't know the truth. It has sort of been lost to them when they live outside the town of Snoggletog. I have to admit Bella that you are the first of those lines in 350 years who has heard the truth."

I had so many questions. But wait one thing. "If I'm the first, how do we hide it from Charlie? He can't know about vampires."

She smiled, "Relax sweetie. He isn't the first without knowledge that travels to the island. Everyone is aware of when one comes, since to come to the island you have to ask for transportation and they hide whatever can't be seen. And before you ask, yes there are many sunny days on the island. It used to be that we'd have to hide out from the sun, but 15 years ago my husband and I accidentally developed a make-up that could hide the sparkle of our skin."

"You're pulling my leg," I said completely sure of it as I looked in her eyes and tried really had not to remember a certain someone's sparkling skin in a meadow.

She laughed. "Nope, but I admit it was by accident. You see, he and I were working in the lab to try to make a cream to treat a rash that had been going around amongst the dragons. Even Toothless got it and he was miserable, poor dear," she said as Toothless came and lay down beside us in the patio chair that we shared and placed his great head on her leg which she and I obligingly petted. "We knew what caused it, but not how to treat it. We had just finished mixing a powder that we thought would do the trick and Hiccup pulled a Terrible Terror that was infected and we were using to experiment on to see if we could find a cure. He escaped from my husband's hands and accidentally knocked a bottle of chemical and a bottle of water into the powder, ruining it. Three days of work down the drain but what could you do? Anyway, I was going to toss out the mix and start a new when the Terror knocked into me and spilled the mix all over me. I was pissed I admit. So I went to the sink to try to wash it off and the sink was by a sunny window. Now all day off and on we had sparkled as we worked. It was not unheard of and we took no notice of it. But I did notice when I didn't sparkle. In fact I screamed in shock. And Hiccup raced back into the room the Terror safely back in its cage. The look on his face was priceless. Where I was covered in the mess, I didn't sparkle. He rubbed some off of me and onto his own skin and it disappeared. His skin was still ultra-pale but he didn't sparkle. And when we washed it off we did so we knew it was the mixture. Obviously, our first priority was threating the rash and we had written down everything, so even though we both wanted to experiment some more with it we shelved it to continue to work on the cure, which we found. Turned out that all we needed to use was an all-natural salve that we had used for centuries to treat diaper rash in our babies. After the situation was contained we went back to working with the make-up eventually creating a line of all-natural make-up that the vampires in the island use to hide their skin, and even look more human."

Again, something else I wished I could tell the Cullens. Astrid and I spoke some more until finally I fell asleep in her arms. Through half-asleep eyes I saw her pick me up and take me back to my bed, and after that I knew no more. But for that one night I had no nightmares and slept soundly throughout the whole night.

**Astrid POV**

I have to admit that I'd been freaked out by Bella's knowledge. Clearly her mate did not know what he had done to the poor girl. When she fell asleep in my arms I took her back to her room. After tucking Bella back into her bed, I went to search for my husband finding him in the bridge. "I take it you heard everything," I said to him leaning against the wall.

He nodded, "More or less. I wonder if the boy has any idea as to what he got them both into."

"Probably not," I answered as I went to look over the sonar. "It's more than clear to me that they have bonded for life. She's suffering the effects of the separation, especially because of how he handled it. I'm concerned about her physical symptoms though as well as the mental ones."

He nodded again. "The pain she feels worries me. It sounds like Broken Heart Syndrome, but it could be something else. How long were they together for?"

"Since March, more or less, from what I understood. About 6 months, or so why?"

"Remember what Mathias taught us about Anatomy? The Venom Bladder?"

I hadn't thought about that. "Shit, I forgot about that. They were together for more than long enough for her to have a bladder full of venom. That could be part of the problem. Which organ would store it though, Appendix or Spleen?"

"Most likely the Appendix, if she still has it. We're going to have to examine her though. And there's so much we are going to have to teach her if she's ever going to be safe returning to Forks. Clearly though the girl is also very perceptive. If she does have a full bladder we're going to have to give her the option of changing her. Her pain could be related to the change, perhaps the bladder has started to leak and if it has she might already be changing, whether she knows it or not. If she is changing, we may or may not be able to let her leave Berk depending on how far along she is. There is one more thing to consider. Could she be pregnant?"

"She didn't mention anything and from her story he seemed far too worried about hurting her to attempt it, though if she does have a full bladder whether it's leaking or not she could become pregnant from that alone. We'll need to know that for sure as well. Clearly the boy was unaware of how exactly mating happens between vampires."

"I know. Humans are capable of mating the same way as us, it's just that we are unable to be altered and thus can't fall out of love or move on which is something either she doesn't know or doesn't understand. Also the boy underestimated her feelings because she's human. If she does have a full venom bladder and given that she is also his singer then they are the third type of mates, and their bond is that much more powerful because she's still mortal."

"I know, type three and a finite bond. Like ours."

He nodded. "But stronger because they shared a relationship while she was mortal, while you and I had a relationship as humans before I turned you. And they also have an aggravator, you have a gift and I don't, but he is gifted and so is she."

"You think so?"

"Yes, I'd say she's a type of shield given that he could not read her mind even as a human. But we'll figure all this out once we get to Berk. You'll have to explain to her about this so that she'll submit to be examined; you know the tests are not a picnic for anyone." I nodded. "There's also another thing that really worries me. The tracker, or more specifically, his mate."

I nodded. "I know. I have half a mind to keep her on Berk with us, but if we do she'll die from the separation from him. From the looks of her she could die from it soon. She's really not eating, though Charlie says that she's been eating on the boat a lot more than she has for the last few months, she also isn't sleeping. She awoke from a terrible nightmare earlier. I heard her scream all the way at the bow of the ship."

"I know I heard her as well. We're going to need to know how all this is also affecting her health wise. I'm concerned about her previous history with illness. How did she take to Toothless, dear?"

"Great actually. She was fearful at first but that's to be expected. But she then approached him. Actually come to think of it, she did instinctively what we've always done when approaching unknown dragons and Toothless accepted her approach. She then asked to pet him and actually giggled at the silly smile he gave her when she did. After her initial fear she was calm with him, even backed into him when she felt afraid of me when she realized what I was. Why?" Then I got it. "Wait, are you thinking about training a dragon for her?"

He nodded. "It's the best solution. Her mate will probably return to her soon, he won't be able to stay away for long, but until he does, she's vulnerable. A dragon would be her best protector against a vampire wishing her harm, and we both know that her mate had it wrong. Out of the two of them, Bella is the most vulnerable and she was not the one that actually killed James, he and his family did. The best way to hurt a vampire is to go through their mate. If that Victoria wants to hurt Edward for the death of her mate, she'll go for Bella, period. An eye for an eye…"

"And a mate for a mate." I nodded finishing his thought. He was right of course. "You're right of course, but even if we're wrong and the witch is not after her but him, there's still the matter of her knowledge. Granted, Bella won't tell anyone, she loves him too much to hurt him and revealing his secrets would do just that, but if the Volturi ever finds out that she knows…" I trailed off shuddering, unwilling to finish the thought, not that I needed to. "We'll have to talk to her about it. And we'll have to pick just the right dragon. She took so well to Toothless, and he to her, that my first choice would be a Night Fury, but he's the only one we have."

He nodded. "A Night Fury would be ideal. They're more adaptable to environments and also easier to hide. Charlie is a concern because of his fear of dragons but not a huge one. She's 18, legally an adult and free to leave his house whenever she likes. In absence of a Night Fury perhaps another dragon that's similar, a Sand Swipper or a Stormcutter. Also a tidal type might be a good fit since they could live in the ocean near her.

"A tidal would be able to be hidden fairly well, but the problem with them is that they don't breathe fire and to protect her from vampires that is a must."

He nodded. "True. Then again we do have to take her preferences into account as well and whether or not the dragon chosen will even choose her. There is the matter of the bonding to consider. But we have plenty of time to go over this, and it is up to her to choose which one she prefers, though I won't be giving her a choice about taking on a dragon. She's in too much danger outside the shores of Berk to be without one, but Bella seems like a practical girl, if stubborn as a mule, I'm sure we could convince her if we explained things. I happened to bring the book of dragons with me. I had hoped to use it to prepare her for what she would see on the island. We could use it to show her the different types so she has an idea of what to pick. For now though, we still have time. I need your help though; weather monitors show a storm coming. At this time of the year, I won't risk sailing through it with two humans in the boat. Can you help me find an island? We crossed Helheim's Gate several hours ago."

I nodded. "Are we out of the gate or almost out of it?" I asked as I sat on the navigation computer.

"Sonar shows we just left it." I nodded as I set to work with the maps and the nave computer. Although the computer did give us a rough estimate on what islands to go to, my preference was still to use the maps drawn by my husband. Though they had needed to refined over time the maps were still the best way to sail around here. Weather interfered with GPS and other equipment so readings from then tended to be not as accurate. Besides, I'm a relic from a time where all we had was a map, a compass and a star to sail by and we got along just fine. In my opinion although the new-fangled toys my husband was so fond of were very useful, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I smiled to myself. When we were growing up we hadn't appreciated my husband's genius. I hadn't lied to Bella when I said he was born ahead of his time. This time filled with technology suited him better, though even he tended to revert back to the ways we were taught since the cradle. His inventions tended to make life on Berk that much easier and years ahead of when they appeared in the modern world, but it took many a year before he was appreciated for it, in fact it took a certain cute black dragon to help steer us in the right direction. "What's the smile about, dear?" I looked over to see my husband grinning at me.

"I guess I'm just an old lady at heart, telling Bella those stories made me a little nostalgic for the old days of our youth and the friends that are long since gone," I told him. He nodded, understanding. As the years passed and the world changed more and more around us, we both found ourselves feeling more and more nostalgic. We probably would never join our loved ones gone so long, and seeing their descendants was sometimes hard, but this was our world and our destiny. Shaking myself out of my mood, I looked over the maps and reviewed the data from the weather monitors. The storm was coming fast as was often the case at this time of the year, but we had a little time. Looking over the maps, I had to grin. "Hey, sweetie, do you remember the island where we foud the dragon trappers?"

"Are you kidding me? We're near it?"

"Near, near, no. It's still about another 2 hours south east of us with three tiny islands in between us, but…" I trailed off.

"Maybe another one of those islands would be best. I'd like to take Bella there too, but the storm's just a little too close to us to sail that far out of course." I nodded, but it was too bad though. I think Bella would have gotten a kick out of seeing the blasted apart fort. Part of it were still there, the Bewilder Beast's ice had preserved it pretty well. "I know, I know. From the way she questioned you, I could tell she was swallowing most of her questions probably getting too tired. I too think she would enjoy it, but it's too dangerous right now. I can feel the shifting of the currents on the wind. The sea's getting a little too rough to continue to sail for much longer." I sighed. He was right of course. I could feel the change as well.

"The first island then. It's tiny but it does have a cove with natural breakers that would be safe for the ship, be careful thought, there are a lot of rocks in between us and there," I told him.

"Can you take the second helm and help me steer us in?" I nodded going out to the helm deck and working the paddles while he steered us with the rudder. It was hard, there were more rocks in the area than even the sonar picked up, but eventually we managed to steer the ship into the cove where we could wait out the storm out of the direct path of it. We would still see some bands of frozen rain but mostly where we were was completely out of the path of the storm. By the time we set the anchor and secured the ship, it was morning, though the sun still had hours to rise. We prepared one of the smaller boats and went ahead and took the supplies needed to shore. While it was safe on the ship, the seas here could get rough and with two fragile humans on board, one of which we weren't sure just how healthy she was given everything, we had thought it best to head on to land just in case. Besides they had been cooped up on the ship for several days now and we still had quite some time before we got home, so they might enjoy being on land for a little bit.

Once Bella and Charlie were awake, we explained about the storm and why we were headed out to the island. "Is the dragon coming with us?" Charlie asked somewhat fearfully. "Oops," he said realizing that Bella didn't know. True to form Charlie balked at having get into the boat with Toothless, or being anywhere near him for that matter. I had so hoped that he would grow out of his senseless fear, but no such luck.

I saw Bella roll her eyes at her father. "Chill, Charlie. They already told me. Honestly, I have no idea what you're so scared off," Bella said. And just to prove her point, when Toothless came out to join us she petted him and scratched his chin. Toothless was thoroughly enjoying the attention.

"Bella, get away from that thing," Charlie said fearfully as he watch the dragon nuzzle into Bella's body. Poor Toothless's head fell; he had never been able to understand why Charlie feared him so, but it hurt him nonetheless.

Bella just rolled her eyes. "I'm not the one with an irrational fear Charlie. He's not going to hurt me," she said ignoring her father as she continued to pet Toothless.

"And yes Charlie, he's coming with us," Hiccup told him, daring the man to contradict him. Honestly neither of us understood our son. He's the only one in over 600 years to show fear towards dragons whether they were raised in Berk or not, Bella's reaction being typical for all our children. After that we got into the boat, Charlie making a point of sitting as far from Toothless as possible who lay up front with me and my husband as we steered the boat towards the island.

Bella, though, sat with us and clearly a good night sleep had set fire to her mind. She was filled with all sorts of questions. Hiccup and I thoroughly enjoyed answering them all. Of course she was careful not to ask anything regarding vampires with Charlie so close but I could see the questions in her eyes. We would tell her all later, away from her father. I pulled the dragon book out and she enjoyed looking it over and learning not only its history but also learning more about the dragons it contained. She asked if she could see them all, and we told them that pretty much all of them were in Berk. Charlie stayed quiet throughout the whole exchange, clearly seeing something in her. Though we had known Bella for only a few short days, even we could see that just her curiosity about the dragons was enough to bring her out of her depression and if we could see it, so could he, so he was staying quiet. He wanted our help for her and this was what he got. As we brought the boat to shore though, I could tell that the fire in her was diming and she was once again quiet. Still it was something. Once we got onto the shore, Toothless started a fire for us and we had already set up the camp. Bella even got her own tent, which I could tell she was grateful for. What 18-year-old wanted to share a room or tent with her father?

The day was overcast, but there was no rain and we didn't expect any for a while. After about an hour Bella suddenly spoke up. "Can I go for a walk?" she asked.

I nodded, before Charlie could protest. "Sure, here you go sweetie," I told her, handing her a backpack filled with food and water in case she wanted to go exploring.

"I don't think I need this."

I smiled. "Just in case, sweetie. It has food and water, also a first aid kit, a fire starter, a two way radio and something to keep the rain off of you. This island is small, only 15 square miles and pretty safe if you want to go exploring." Then I whispered in her ear, "Plus we could find you easily if you got lost or in trouble. It's more for your father's peace of mind that actual need." She nodded and put on the backpack. She walked to the edge of the cove and then walked away into the island.


	4. 3 On The Sea of Discovery Pt 2

_**Author's Note: **So here it is at long last. The next chapter of the story. I was having a little trouble with it so excure any mistakes, English is not my first language. I hope I got them all, but there may be some I didn't see. Now I have some problems with the next two chapters and would like to ask what my readers think._

_**Problem 1 Chapter 4 title**_

_I'm torn between "The Barbarian Archipielago" and "Isle of Berk" for this chapter. In it Bella arrives in Berk to begin her adventures and her training to become a dragon trainer and also learn to care for her new pets. She may or may not leave Berk depending on how the story develops. What does everyone think?_

_**Problem 2 Chapter 5**_

_This chapter is called "Homeward Bound" and in it Bella's heading home to Berk but without her pets. I can't decide on two things first whether or not to pay a visit to Edward here since chapter 7 or 8, haven't decided depending on how the story evolves since I may break chapter 4 in two parts depending on how long it is, will be entirely on his point of view and will follow what he has been up to apart from her. But I am getting a little concerned about him since, and **yes this is a spoiler alert**, when Bella learns more about vampires from her ancestors we will know that she and Edward are now racing against a clock that started last September and may be the death of them both. **DON'T WORRY I WON'T KILL THEM!** But they are in trouble, Edward more so than her thanks to her ancestors._

_Please Review and let me know what you think. Now on with the story._

* * *

**3\. On The Sea of Discovery Pt. 2**

**Bella POV**

I had to admit that I'd been surprised to be allowed out by myself, but I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I needed some time to sort myself out. I was suffering from a bit of a case of information overload. And who wouldn't be when in the course of a few hours they had learned as much as I had. And there was still the matter of everything that had been going on before all of this. What I wouldn't give to have Edward and the Cullens here right now, him at least. There was so much I wanted to tell him. Still, what could you do? Not a day went by where I didn't find something else that I wanted to tell him about, he had been my confidant and now I had no one I could talk to. Sure I had friends, but I wasn't that close to them. I didn't trust them enough to speak to them about anything. Sure I had secrets to keep but I still felt I couldn't speak to them… Maybe the truth was that I just didn't trust people. I could trust vampires and now dragons, but not people. Is there something wrong with me? Of course, but I was as I was. The dragon part was a shocker though. Yet another fairytale come to life. Is there anything that's a myth really? Could it be that all those stories were in fact true? I shook my head. Right now, I wouldn't be at all surprised if I suddenly found a mermaid who wanted to sit down and have tea with me while she told me all about her under sea kingdom. Really, was I a magnet for all things supernatural as well as a magnet for danger?

I was broken out of my thoughts as I tripped on a rock I didn't notice and fell, scratching my palms pretty bad. _Great, just what I need. Another injury,_ I thought to myself as I picked myself up and sat on a boulder to check my palms. They were scratched pretty badly. Great just great. I took the backpack off and pulled out the first aid kit. _I guess I really did need this after all,_ I thought as I opened it and quickly cleaned and bandaged my palms, the right being worse off that the left since it took the brunt of the impact. _I guess I should be grateful. I'd gone a while without falling._ I looked around intending to pick my way back to the camp. But I didn't know where I was. "Way to go Bella," I said to myself. I'd been so lost in thought that I had lost track of where I was and was now lost. A look at my watch revealed that it was half-pass noon. I'd been walking for hours so who knows where I was. Astrid did say the island was only 15 square miles and I was in the company of two vampires with centuries of experience not to mention a dragon so I wasn't really worried. They would find me soon enough. My stomach chose that moment to grumble. _Might as well stop here and have some lunch, _I thought to myself. I'd been pretty hungry lately. I opened the bag and found several Tupperware containers and a small bag cooler. Pulling them out I looked at what I had and had to smile. Astrid had really gone all out. She'd packed several large thick sandwiches, some apples and grapes, a couple dozen chocolate chip cookies, three large bottles of water and several sodas that were still completely cold. She had even packed several raw fish that I could cook up over a fire. In the bag I also found a large blanket, a thick, waterproof sleeping bag and a large tarp-like poncho which I could unzip and tie up to make a roof. Clearly she'd made sure I was prepared in case I got lost. I even found the two-way radio she promised and the magnesium fire-starter plus a sharp knife and even a book about edible plants in the archipelago. It wise quite the hall especially since I hadn't noticed the weight of it. I spread the blanket out on the ground and prepared a lovely picnic, eating 2 of the large sandwiches that were roast beef and the grapes plus a soda. Clearly I'd worked up an appetite.

As I was picking up my stuff, and trying to decide whether to call for help or keep walking since I still wanted to be alone, something green caught my eye. Now as I had walked for the whole day I had pretty much seen the same scenery. The whole area was just large black lava rocks so seeing that bit of green immediately attracted my attention. I picked up my stuff and went to look around. Then I was interrupted by a noise over the two-way. I stopped and pulled it out of my bag, thankful that the instructions were printed on the side because I'd never used one.

"Hello?"

"_Bella sweetie. It's Hiccup."_

"Oh hi."

"_Sweetie, it's going to rain soon so I was calling to see where you were so that I could come get you. Your father's getting a little too worried about you."_

I had to roll my eyes at that. But then I felt a little sheepish. "Actually I don't know. I kinda lost track of where I was," I told him.

He laughed. _"It's alright, I can find you. Can you see anything around you?"_

"Actually yes, there's a large patch of green I think it's a meadow or something. I wanted to go check it out."

"_It's okay if you want to. I know exactly where you are, but I'm surprised. You got pretty far away. You're more or less in the middle of the island. I'll be there soon to get you. Be careful though there's usually quite a bit of ice in that general area. There's also a grove with a small lake fed by a spring waterfall that comes out of the rock. It's pretty and full of fish, but the area's pretty slippery so be careful. I'll be there soon."_

"Okay," I said and rang off making sure to put the radio back in my bag. I picked it up and kept walking. I was surprised that I had walked so long. I didn't really feel tiered or winded. It was surprising; I'd never been the athletic type. Still I wanted to explore the meadow and see the grove.

I had to admit that it was pretty. The meadow had plenty of artic grass with snow in between and I could also see other plants I had no name for. I made sure to watch my step as I walked. There was quite a bit of ice in the area. Finally I came upon a slight incline that had a lot of ice so I got down on my knees and crawled carefully to the edge, mindful of the ice. When I looked out over the edge I could see it. It was the grove that Hiccup told me about. And it was so pretty. The lake was small, it was basically a pond and such a deep blue and it was fed by a waterfall. I was surprised that it was not frozen since it was so cold but then I noticed that there were small steam vents and also a small hot spring so I imagined that it kept the area pretty warm. In fact, as I looked over one of the vent let out a puff of steam and the wind blew the gentle warmth into my face. It was covered in grasses that I guessed never died out since the soil here was so rich and it was so warm. I thought it was lovely. And felt a pang of sadness, wishing I could share this with him. I shook myself out of my morose thoughts and continued to look over the grove while waiting for my ancestor. It was then I noticed a raised outcropping of rock out of the corner of my eye and something darker than the lava rocks laying there. Curious, I looked over thinking it was a trick of the light… But it wasn't

It was a slab of the blackest midnight nighttime, darker than the black rocks around it. I would have thought it an unusually shaped boulder where it not for the sheen of its scale and the large eyes that were looking out over the grove towards the lake where even I could see fish jumping and playing in the water. There before me lay Toothless soaking up the sun. I was surprised he was here. I thought he'd be at the camp… But wait… it wasn't Toothless. This animal, while they looked the same, was much thinner than the dragon I'd left back at the camp. In fact I'd say he was emaciated from the way he looked, while Toothless had looked happy and healthy laying by the fire when I had left the camp. No way could this be the same dragon. Then I noticed scarlet streaks on the side of the dragon. They were raw and they looked infected. This dragon was hurt. It was then that our eyes locked. His were cloudy with pain and seemed to call to me, asking for help. Honestly, I don't have a clue was posed me to do it, but I stood and went down a narrow path to my right that would barely be big enough for the dragon to pass through and went down to the grove. I approached slowly, and slowed even more when the dragon, who had never taken his eyes off of me growled.

"It's okay. I won't hurt you," I spoke to him gently, trying to calm him. "I just want to be friends and to help you. You can trust me, I won't hurt you." He cocked his head to the side but growled as I came onto the ridge that he lay on. He tried to get up but was too weak to stand. I froze in place and slowly put my bag down. I remembered Astrid's story and knew that it would help me win his trust to feed him, and it just so happened that I had several fish with me. I pulled the fish out of the container, noticing it was salmon, and help it out to him. "Here, are you hungry, boy?" I asked, reaching the fish out to him. He smelled it and reached his head out to get it, but could not get up. I tossed the fish with atypical skill straight to him and it fell near his mouth. He proceeded to devour the fish in one bite. I pulled the other fish containers out and tossed him another, which he ate immediately. With the containers on hand, I took a few steps and then tossed him another fish. Then took a few more and tossed him another. A few more steps and I was within arm's length of the dragon and he took the fish I held out to him from my hand and ate it. I reached my hand out to it and left there, letting him come to me. He looked at my hand unsure. "Trust me, I won't hurt you. I just wanna help you," I looked away when I heard a pebble fall. The next thing I knew, the dragon had placed his head against my hand. I grinned as he purred and petted his head and scratched his chin, his purr growing louder. I spent a few minutes petting him, trying to get him to relax so I could get a look at his side. Maybe I could help him. Once I felt he was calm, I asked him, "Can I take a look at your side? Maybe I can help you feel better."

He bowed his great head and I took that to mean yes, so I slowly took a few steps to take a look at his side. And it was as nasty as I thought it would be. The wound looked like claw marks and it was badly infected. A putrid smell just oozing from it, making me gag. He wasn't bleeding at least but I wasn't so sure that was a good thing since he had dried on puss and dried blood caked on the wound. I thought for a moment about leaning it out, but, not knowing what would happen if I did, I refrained. I sighed, there was nothing I could do. I needed help. I went back to my backpack, meaning to call Hiccup for help, knowing he was a dragon vet when I heard someone call out. "Bella?" The echo bounced off of the walls.

"Here, I'm here," I called back waving as I saw Hiccup up on the ridge. He waved back and I knew he'd seen me. Beside him as always was Toothless. "I need your help. The dragon is hurt really bad." He appeared beside my backpack and Toothless followed down behind him at a pace I could actually see, but stopped even further away. The dragon at my side growled angrily. I reached out to him, petting him to calm him, especially since he was trying to get up. "It's okay. They're friends. They just want to help." The dragon locked eyes with me once again and calmed after a few moments.

"Well done, Bella," Hiccup said suddenly. I looked at him confused. "You handled him very well, Bella. Even I wouldn't have been able to calm Toothless that quickly when he's as injured as your friend here is." I gave him a small grin. "Now Bella, as you are his trainer now, and the dragon trusts you, you need to show him he can trust me so that I can look him over." I nodded. "Walk towards me Bella. Now he won't like that since he sees me as a possible threat, so do it calmly. If he growls turn to him and speak to him to let him know it's okay." I did as he said. "Very good Bella. Now take my arm and lead me to the dragon. I'll take care of the rest." I did as he said and led him over to my friend. Hiccup held his hand out and turned his face away. The dragon sniffed his hand, looked at Toothless, probably smelling him on my ancestor, then placed his head against the hand.

I was surprised. "He didn't purr. He did with me."

He nodded. "It's alright. He wouldn't purr for me. He's giving me his trust, but his loyalty is to you. That's what the purr means."

"But Toothless purrs. And he did the first time."

He nodded. "You petted him. Toothless loves that so he purred in contentment. The first time he did it, he was trying to put you at ease. He does that on occasion when he's introduced to a child of mine who is fearful. Part of it was that he smelled my scent in your blood so he knew you were in fact mine. He's always been gentle with all my descendants." I nodded, understanding. "Now let's take a look at your friend here."

Hiccup spent a bit of time looking over the wound, even instructed me on how to get the dragon to turn on its side. I sighed. The belly wounds were pretty and were trickling blood. "It's bad isn't it? What would have happened to him," I wondered.

Hiccup sighed. "From the looks of him, I'd say he's been in a dragon fight. Probably protecting his territory. This is a prime location to make a home and other dragons would want it. The claw marks look like Monstrous Nightmare marks." He sighed again. "There isn't much I can do here. I have a dragon first aid kit, but I didn't know what you had found and didn't think I'd need it so I didn't bring it with me. We'll have to take him back to camp. I'll clean and dress his wounds as well as I can for now and Toothless'll carry him back to camp if he can't walk there himself." He gave me a small grin. "Charlie's not going to like this, yet another dragon and one that really likes you," he laughed. I laughed nodding.

"What do you need, Astrid packed me a first aid kit?"

"Bring it out here. Did she pack anything we can use as a bandage? The ones in there are far too small."

"There were a couple of thick blankets and a sleeping bag," I told him, bringing the bag over and handing him the kit. He nodded to himself, looking over what we had. Then he looked around the grove for something, though I wasn't sure what.

"This is pretty good. It'll do in a pinch, and the water would be good for cleaning him up. I need you to do something for me. There's a patch of dragon nip on the left side of the lake and beside it is a bush with red berries on it. Can you bring me the dragon nip and berries, also a large rock?" I nodded and walked over to the dragon nip and berries, gathering them in one of the Tupperware containers. Once the container was full, I picked up a large white rock a ways away that was twice as big as my hand and brought it back to him. Hiccup smiled at me. "Perfect Bella. Now, here's a little lesson. The dragon nip has a scent that soothes dragons, but it also has medicinal properties. When smashed with these berries and some calcium powder it acts as an antiseptic. You didn't know it, but the rock you picked up is a calcite, solid calcium." I grinned at that and watched as Hiccup separated some of the dragon nip away from the rest then added the berries to it and broke off a piece of the rock, crushing it into powder and adding it to the other ingredients before mashing it with the rock. "Now while I take care of this, I need you to hold tie the blanket to that branch so that Toothless can claw me some strips out of it." I did as he asked and Toothless quickly had the blanket turned into ribbons. You know, it just hit me that I should have fainted at the sight of the wound on the dragon. Weird.

Anyway I picked up the ribbons of the blanket and brought them to Hiccup. "Are these enough?"

He nodded. "That's perfect Bella. Now I need you to keep him calm. This is going to hurt him but it can't be helped. I'll try to be as gentle as I can." He picked up the dragon nip. "Here use these to help you distract him, keep them close to his nose and keep his attention on you." I did as he said and within a few minutes Hiccup had cleaned and bandaged my new friend. "Well done Bella. Now Let's see if he can stand."

"I saw him try, he couldn't."

He nodded. "We'll let him try one last time, if not then Toothless and I will carry him back to the camp." Together we tried to get the dragon to stand but it was no use, he was too weak and too injured. "Okay then, we'll carry him. He's all wet though, did you notice?" I shook my head. He looked around the field. "It hasn't rained here yet. The grass is dry, but I can see claw marks at the edge of the lake. I think he tried to fish and couldn't get out of the water. If that's the case then he may have water in his lungs."

"Is that bad?"

He nodded. "Yes, if his lungs are filled with water, carrying him will make it that much harder to breathe. I need you to see if you can find a pale blue flower with 4 petals. It should grow in the grass. We can mash that with the berries and make a diuretic to help clear up that water. It'll also make him clam so the journey back to the camp will be a little less painful for him." I nodded and searched the grove for the flower. I happened to find a large patch of it at the other end of the lake and picked them along with some more berries. I brought them back to Hiccup who quickly mashed them up with dragon nip and then handed me the bowl of Tupperware. I looked at him confused. "He's your dragon Bella. You bonded with him. And he trusts you. You should be the one to take care of him."

"But I…"

"I know sweetie, but the truth is that Astrid and I were planning on giving you a dragon to be your protector. You don't realize it, do you? But you are actually in great danger. That vampire Victoria is most likely after you, not him since you're more vulnerable. A dragon would be a great protector against a vampire. Honestly there is much Astrid and I need to speak with you about and teach you so that you'll be safe when you leave us. You know a lot about the world, more than most people, but there are things the Cullens didn't teach you, probably because they didn't know them or hadn't expected things to go as they did."

"What could you know that they don't? Not counting the dragons at least," I wondered.

He grinned. "You want an example?" I nodded as I fed the dragon the mash he gave me. "Did you know there was once a kingdom ruled by vampires? And I don't mean Volterra where the Volturi rule our world from."

I turned to him with my eyes as big as saucers. "You're pulling my leg," I said totally sure that it was true.

He shook his head as Toothless rubbed into him. "Nope. Granted I didn't see it for myself, it was in ruins long before I was born. But I learned from it from vampires that actually lived there. It was part of the Persian Empire and existed little over 1,000 years ago or so. Its name was Valkaria, which was the name of the capital city and ruled over several cities however Valkaria had only vampires in residence. And those vampires hunted the villages in their territory as they liked with no secrecy or care. Rumors spread like wildfire and eventually the Volturi had to intervene. It was finally defeated and engulfed by the Persians 300 years into its existence and the only reason they succeeded was because the Volturi killed off all the vampires and brought humans to seem like they were in residence there. The men that I met lived there for a short time and escaped when rumors of the Volturi coming started to spread." I had to admit that my curiosity was peeked. I finished feeding the mixture to the dragon and he nuzzled into my side. Hiccup grinned. "He's saying thank you. The mix takes effect pretty fast to he's now feeling much more comfortable."

I nodded and petted him gently. 'You're welcome." I turned to Hiccup. "How do we get him back to the camp though?"

"His other side is not as injured as this one. I'll pick him up on that side and set him on Toothless' back since he's a little too injured for me to carry him," Hiccup explained as he picked my dragon up. Wait my dragon, was I taking this on so quickly? Though it would be cool to have one. The dragon, however, had other ideas and flailed as he was being picked up.

"It's okay, It's okay. We're just taking you home with us so that we can take care of your injuries. You'll be alright," I told him as I frantically petted his head. He calmed a bit but still refused to be picked up.

"This is weird. It's like he doesn't want to leave. Toothless can you ask him what's wrong?" he said to his dragon.

And I was shocked to hear Toothless purr out what sounded like _"What's wrong? Why don't you want to leave?"_ Or something like that.

I was even more shocked to hear a reply purr, though I couldn't for the life of me make out what he said. "They can talk?" I asked.

Hiccup grinned. "No, not really, but their vocal cords can make purr sounds that sound like words. It takes dragons a while to learn how to do this and the trainer has to develop a bit of an ear for it to understand what the dragon's trying to tell you. We call it Dragonese, the language of dragons which is part purrs and growls and part body language. It's not that uncommon. Cats and dogs make certain sounds to mean certain things and over time their owners learn to decipher it if they pay enough attention or children when they can't speak cry in certain tones to indicate what they want."

"Could you make out what he said?" I wondered.

He shook his head. "Barely. It was something about the cave or guarding the cave. I'm not sure. It's obvious he hasn't been around humans enough to develop the purr patterns that sound like words yet. I can tell you this though, he won't budge. We need to figure out what's in the cave." I nodded as he grabbed a branch from a nearby tree and broke it off then rapped the scraps of cloth left and rubbed some oil, I hadn't seen, from my backpack onto it.

"What are you doing?"

He smiled. "I'm making a torch for you. I'll go in with you of course but you can't see in the dark. Astrid was thorough as always but forgot to include a flashlight. She did, however, include the oil for torches, but I guess she forgot that you aren't used to this kind of thing. I don't think you've ever been camping before now, have you?" I shook my head. "Well it's one more thing we'll fix while you're here."

"I'm not much of an outdoors girl," I told him as he had Toothless light the torch.

He smiled. "It's not about being outdoorsy, Bella. It's about survival skills. Say that when you and Charlie go back to Alaska, you get into a car wreck and while you're both fine you're now lost in the middle of one of the most inhospitable forests in the world. What do you do? You can't really relay on you father for everything. He might know some things about camping in the area he's lived in for so many years, but not Alaska. Or say that you go for a walk in the wooded trails near your home, but trip and fall down an embankment. You're fine, just a few bumps and bruises but now you're off the trail and got turned around in the fall and don't know where you are. What do you do until help comes? How do you find water and food and shelter? It's really not that uncommon, Bella, for people to get into survival situations when they are doing something normal and not dangerous at all. I'm not saying we'll turn you into a big outdoors lady but at least you'll know you'll be able to take care of yourself if you get into trouble. Now here, take the torch and lead the way. He trusts you so he won't have as much of a problem with this if you go first." I nodded taking the torch and we began walking into the cave. "Oh, at some point you're going to have to figure out a name for your new friend, Bella." I nodded as we began the trek into the cave.

**Hiccup POV**

"She's been gone for hours," Charlie said for the 10,000th time. Actually I only thought it was the 10,000th time, I had lost track since it had started 2 minutes after she left. I rolled my eyes and so did Astrid. This was ridiculous.

"Charlie, you're being ridiculous. Bella's not a baby anymore. You have to stop trying to coddle her," Astrid told him.

He glared at her. "You don't know her. She could get lost easily or get hurt. She's a klutz, trips over air. Anything could happen to her," Charlie worried. "I shouldn't have let her go, what if something happens to her?"

Astrid rolled her eyes at him again. "Why do you think I gave her that backpack? It has enough supplies to camp out for 3 days, a first aid kit and a radio along with means to start a fire. This island's tiny. You could cross it from shore to shore in a day and still have plenty of time to set up camp. Bella's also not an infant. And she needs time to herself to think. Honestly Charlie, you brought her to us looking for help for her because you were afraid of the behavior she was showing after her boyfriend left her. Very well. That's what we are giving you. But we do it our way. Coddling her only makes it worse. Part of the reason she acts like this is because she doesn't have anyone that understands how she feels. Your daughter struck me as the type that feels things deeply, perhaps too deeply. Given the case what she needed above all else was **time**. Time to sort herself out. Time to get past what happened and move on and time to grieve. And yes I said grieve. Investing yourself in a relationship, planning possible futures with that person and then suddenly have that ripped away from you is painful and she needs to mourn that loss so she can move on from it," Astrid explained. Okay so we knew things were far more complicated than that but that was the acceptable-for-humans explanation. For obvious reasons Charlie couldn't know the whole truth. "You went through the same thing after your divorce. It's normal. I would worry more if she were happy go lucky after a bad break-up of what you yourself told us was her first relationship. Yes, you did have reasons to worry about her. We don't discount that. But you also need to let her grieve and you've been unwilling to do that so far."

I had to second my wife. "Charlie she's right. Bella needs time. You saw her earlier on the boat. Her endless questions and eagerness to know more. I could tell that was her personality shining through. And you didn't see her last night. She had a nightmare and went for a walk on the deck. Astrid found her and they started talking. She got her to open up to her and talk about how she felt. A huge part of her problem is both you and her mother. Neither of you were capable of raising her and be what she needed you to be: **her parents**. All this time, you've both been making life hard for her. She practically raised herself along with her mother, and you're no better. You're a child to her and Renée is a toddler, both unable to care for yourselves so she has to be the grownup and take care of you. Now here comes a boy, more mature than either of her parents, who took care of her and fulfilled things she needed and what he couldn't do for her, his family was more than happy to do. Then it was all taken away. No parental figures, no older sibling figures, no best female friend, and no boyfriend and confidant. And all she has left were two people that to her are children forcing her to be a grownup and take care of them when what she needs is for them to take care of her. How does an 18-year-old handle that? She's had a family to take care of since she was old enough to reason. No one's taken care of her and when she needs someone to turn to there is no one to help her pick up the pieces when she fell apart. Now, we let her go because she needed to. She needs time to herself. You felt she was distancing herself from her friends, but what friends exactly are we talking about, because the children in her school are too young to be her friends? She's a grownup, you forced her to be that and the kids are just that, kids. She doesn't like the boys in school because to her they were nothing more than immature dogs only looking to score with her."

"And the girls at school are no better. Jessica and Lauren, from her own descriptions, are shallow and backstabbers, only looking for the latest gossip and looking to tear down other girls to make themselves look better. Angela is the only one that I think would be a good friend for her, but even she is too young to be of help except offering her friendship, which is what she's doing. Bella is too far ahead of her peers mentally to be able to socialize with kids her own age, you and Renée made sure of that." Astrid continued for me. "Then here you are at a loss as to what to do for her, understandable since this is the first time you've had to actually try to be a parent where she's always been that for you. Of course you're at a loss as to what to do. Now here you are in a situation where you have to be a grownup and take care of her, but you've always been the one needing to be taken care of and of course she won't be taken care of by someone that she thinks of a child. She won't allow that. So you try to coddle her, wrap her up in a plastic bubble when what she really needs is for someone to say _'Hey Bella. It's going to be okay. I'm here for you.' _And for that someone to be capable of following through with that promise, which incidentally is the promise you made to her when you brought her into the world and have not fulfilled. Grow up Charlie. Your daughter is 18 and already is far more grown up than you."

Charlie was speechless. The look on his face told me that he had never even seen that before. "Surprised, Charlie? I don't see why. Do you even really know your daughter?" I asked him.

He shook his head. "She only spent summers with me after her mom took her back."

"You mean after you handed her back to her mother because you were still in love with her, even after she abandoned you and took your child away, even after she abandoned that child with you because she was too immature to deal with the fact that she had a severely ill child. Don't mince words here Charlie. Things are as they are. Bella knows you, though you don't know her, clearly. She said that your house has been the same for 17 years, exactly as it was when Renée left you. You don't date. You don't acknowledge other women when they have an interest in you and Bella had seen the long list of women that had an interest in you. What you do is pine away for a woman who left you, moved on, and is happy with someone else. Think about it this way, Charlie. If you've been this way all these years, do you think your daughter as shallow and flighty as her mother? That all she needs is a good cry and to eat some ice cream and that next week she'll be dating someone new? Or is Bella a young woman, mature enough to step into the role of parent and care for herself since she got saddled with two parents who couldn't, who sees the value in relationships and works hard on them, invests herself completely in them? Time, Charlie. That's what she needs. She may or may not move on, but time will be the one to tell."

Now Charlie was livid. "How can you tell me anything of value? You don't even know her. I'm her father, I do know her," Charlie cried.

I snorted. "And do you know her? Let's start with something simple. Do you know Bella's favorite books? Her favorite flavor of ice cream? Do you know her clothing size? Do you know what she likes to do when it's raining? Do you know what she wants to study in college? Do you know what her favorite cartoon was? Or what her favorite clothes are? Can you answer those questions Charlie? They may seem dumb, but those answers are common knowledge to all parents."

Charlie was silent for a moment, thinking. "I… I…"

I nodded. "See. You can't answer that, so you can't answer the harder questions."

"Step back Charlie. You wanted us to help her. You wanted us to make her better, make her herself again. Very well. Then let us handle her our way, since clearly your way can't possibly work when you don't even know who she is, other than that you brought her into the world and paid child support for her," Astrid finished.

"Your way clearly can't work very well either then when I know enough about her that I know she can get hurt or lost and you let her go off alone."

I snorted again. "Over protective fool. You can't expect her to make your meals one minute and then wear pigtails and play jacks the next. Guess what, she's an adult. If she wants to go there's nothing you can do about it. We let her go for a walk because we noticed she was suffering from information overload. Didn't catch that one did you? Cut her a break Charlie. What did you expect? You yourself never told her anything about this place or all the history surrounding it. You always hated it, you told her so yourself. Then here you are, dragging her to the middle of nowhere and here she's thrown a thousand bits of information with no time to absorb it. What Astrid told her is true. This island is only 15 square miles. We are the best tracker in the whole archipelago and we have a Night Fury dragon with us. If she gets lost we can find her easily, and we had given her a means to stay in touch with us back here, so even if she gets lost all she had to do is stay put and Astrid and I will find her. Although she could reasonably cross to the other side of the island and then walk along the shore back her, this island's small enough for that." I looked up at the sky noticing the dark clouds rolling in. "However, I notice there are some dark clouds coming in so it looks like it'll rain in a couple of hours. At this time of the year and being at sea, the rain is frozen and it can hail. So I'm going to look for her now because of that."

"Here, the two-way radio. I had set Bella's on channel 2," Astrid said handing me the radio. I nodded and set the channel before calling her.

"_Hello?"_

"Bella sweetie. It's Hiccup."

"_Oh hi."_

"Sweetie, it's going to rain soon so I was calling to see where you were so that I could come get you. Your father's getting a little too worried about you."

"_Actually I don't know. I kinda lost track of where I was,"_ she told me, her tone sheepish. Charlie looked at me like she'd just vindicated him, but really it was to be expected, it's hard to navigate without landmarks and this island was mostly lava rock until you got to the center.

I had to laugh. "It's alright, I can find you. Can you see anything around you?"

"_Actually yes, there's a large patch of green I think it's a meadow or something. I wanted to go check it out."_

I was surprised. She had gotten quite far, further than I thought she would. "It's okay if you want to. I know exactly where you are, but I'm surprised. You got pretty far away. You're more or less in the middle of the island. I'll be there soon to get you. Be careful though there's usually quite a bit of ice in that general area. There's also a grove with a small lake fed by a spring waterfall that comes out of the rock. It's pretty and full of fish, but the area's pretty slippery so be careful. I'll be there soon."

"_Okay."_ I rang off but left the channel open just in case.

"C'mon Toothless. I know you could use a walk to stretch your legs," I called to my best friend. I could track Bella easily without him, but I liked just being with my friend. Astrid teased me that Toothless and I were an old married couple going through a bout of honeymooner syndrome after years together. But who cared right. We'd been together so long, and Astrid wasn't the only one who got bouts of nostalgia. Hanging out with Toothless, going for flights or just hiking around the island never failed to bring back so many memories of my youth when I was a young awkward boy and we became friends, of the friends and family now long since departed and the many adventures we had shared. Hell, I even thought about Snotlout, the one from our youth when we were friends, and even wondered where things had gone so wrong. Astrid had lost Stormfly in Snotlout's raid; she'd given her life to save Astrid from Snotlout. My wife could never bear to take another dragon to replace her. She had trained hundreds for others but could never bring herself to train one for herself so she always rode with me and Toothless now. I understood her; I could never imagine life without my best friend. And as the years passed I just wanted to spend more time with him, not knowing if one day he would not be there to go on a walk with me. It's true that he had not changed since we were 25 years old, in fact, he looks as he did when we defeated Drago so many, many years ago; and we had found old stories that spoke of the Night Fury, the unholy offspring of lightning and death itself, as having an everlasting life, but oral traditions could be blown out of proportion and there was so much we still didn't know. We could never know when our time would be up and as the years had passed and I had sent so many on their final ocean voyage and watched them burn, their ashes floating away on the breeze, these times with my best friend had become more and more precious to me, since one day I may not have them.

Toothless and I followed Bella's trail all the way to the grove. "Curious little girl," I said to myself, noticing how Bella's trail in the meadow kept backtracking over itself as she explored. I smiled. Curiosity was a good thing and I would encourage it, though it could lead to trouble. Since her trail was such a mess, I couldn't tell where she had gone off to. Then I remembered telling her about the grove here. It was similar to the one I had found Toothless in. She must have gone there. I had to smack my head with my palm. Of course she would want to explore it, it was very pretty. I should have thought of that first. Toothless and I walked up the ridge to look over the edge of the grove and there I received the greatest shock of my life…

For more than 600 years I had believed him to be the only one of his kind. My own mother had spent twenty years among dragons before returning to us and even she had not seen another like him. I had searched all over the world, and discovered many, many dragons, some even now extinct but had never seen another Night Fury besides my own best friend… And there before me was another and Bella was trying to approach him. I smiled, letting her, and held Toothless back. "Relax, we'll keep her safe but let her try. I had hoped to get a dragon for her, to protect her, but she found one on her own." He nodded and sat back but I knew he watched her like a hawk despite his relaxed posture. Toothless had always been protective of my children. I took the radio and called my wife to let her know what was going on. She wouldn't believe this.

"_Hiccup, did you find her?"_ Astrid asked.

I had to grin. "Yes, and you have no idea what it is she found."

"_What? Is she okay?"_

"She's fine, worrywart. I see where Charlie gets that from, by the way. I'm watching over her and will intervene if she gets in trouble but I thought to let her try her luck to train the… **dragon** she found all on her own"

I heard the swooshing of air that told me she was looking for privacy to speak. _"__**HOLD IT RIGHT THERE, BUSTER!**__ You mean to tell me she found a wild dragon on this island? There hasn't been one here in 50 years, they all moved on to Itchy Armpit after that big storm took out most of the plants and food. And you're letting her do it on her own?"_

I nodded. "Yep, it's the best way for her to learn and besides she's doing everything just right. She's talking softly to it, and feeding him fish with every few steps. He's hurt and emaciated, but seems calm in her presence. And is actually taking the fish from her. Besides she's so tiny, no one would think her a threat. But you wouldn't believe what kind she found."

"_What? A Deadly Nadder or Thunderdrum?"_

"**NOPE**. Guess again."

"_A Seashocker, they were common on this island once upon a time?"_

"Wrong again, my dear. One last chance," I told my wife thoroughly enjoying this game. I picked up a pebble and tossed it against the wall beside Bella, drawing her eyes away from the dragon for a moment. She'd been doing very well so far, but needed to look away to show her trust so the dragon would know to trust her. Once she looked away, while holding out her hand to the dragon, he placed his head against her hand and purred. **SCORE!** Bella was now a Night Fury dragon rider, and had passed the first three tests of the academy, and didn't even know it. Okay so I helped a little, but she had really been doing it all on her own, and considering the dragon was injured, help would have been advisable.

"_Well if it were a the Screaming Death from our youth that had later made a home on that island, you would have already gotten her out of there and all of us, so I give up. What did she find?"_

"Well first and because I really am enjoying drawing the suspense out, let me tell you this. Our girl has the makings of a great dragon trainer, possibly even a dragon master."

"_And why is that?"_

"Because, my oh so lovely bride, she has just passed the first three Dragon Academy Rider exams: Winning your first dragon's trust, Approaching a wild dragon, and Training a wild dragon. And she'd never even seen a dragon until last night. Right now, I'm watching her pet her new friend to help him relax more so she can look at his injured side. I will admit that I did help her out by throwing a pebble at the wall beside her to draw her eyes away from the dragon and display her trust, but given that the dragon she had found is severely injured and emaciated, that small amount of help is allowed, we don't really have time to waste and risk losing this dragon."

"_Great. Two more exams and she's a Rider. Now tell me what she found before I make sure you can't talk right for a very long time, and it will have nothing to do with holding your windpipe hostage, buster."_

I laughed, gods I loved that woman, death threats and all. Hmm, did that make me a pansy? "You would really do that to your poor husband who loves you so very, very much. Besides you would be suffering too."

"_If you're talking about what I think you're talking about Mr. Haddock. I will advise you that I can take care of that all by myself. Now get on with it. Oh, and of course I love you too. I wouldn't have put up with you all these years if I didn't."_

"Put up with me?" I asked jokingly, to draw it out.

"_GET ON WITH IT, OR YOU'LL BE 'SLEEPING' ALONE FOR THE NEXT MONTH!"_

I laughed. "Okay, okay. Let's play a game. I'll tell you about the dragon, and you tell me which it is. And here's a small hint just because I happen to be in love with you Mrs. Haddock. I'll use the description from the Book of Dragons from when we were learning to kill them as teens."

"_GET ON WITH IT, ALREADY!"_

"Yes well: 'Speed – Unknown, Size – Unknown. The unholy offspring of lightning and death itself. Never engage this dragon. Your only chance… Hide and pray it does not find you. Still a most accurate description wouldn't you say, though it does need some more information…" Astrid cut me off with a scream.

"_**SHE FOUND A NIGHT FURY?!**__"_

"Yep. She found it in that lovely grove at the center of the island that I happened to have brought you to once…"

She cut me off again. _"You're pulling my leg, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III."_

I laughed, she was using my full name. "Why would I, my darling wife, when we'll be bringing Bella's new friend to camp. He's hurt and could use some help."

"_You have to be kidding me. Over 600 years and nothing and then all of a sudden she finds one on her own after we had discussed training a dragon for her and that the most ideal one would be a Night Fury? Wait, hold it. Did you say he's hurt? And Are you sure it's a he?"_

"No, I'm not sure he's a boy, I would have to examine him, but I'm staying out of it for a bit to let them bond. And, yes, I did say he's hurt. And pretty bad from the looks of it all the way up here on the ridge. If I had known what she had found I would have run back to camp for the first aid kid, but she found and approached it just as I arrived. I dare not leave her alone with a wild, injured dragon even if I'm stepping back to let her train and bond with him."

"_I could run the kit up to you."_

I shook my head. "The thought crossed my mind, but I don't want to overwhelm him. I do spy plenty of things to help him right now so we can move him. We'll bring him back to the camp with us. Can you set up a medical tent for him? He's pretty bad and I don't want him out in the elements any more than he already has been. He looks too weak to walk, couldn't even get up when Bella approached him at first, though he tried."

"_We'll you carry him or will Toothless?"_

"Depends on what I find when I examine him. Also call Berk and let them know we're bringing in a severely injured dragon. One we can't possible lose given what he is so that they'll pull out all the stops. I'm gonna let her know I'm here and check on him. I'll let you know what I find," I told her before ringing off. "Bella?" I called loudly my voice echoing across the grove. The dragon growled, unsure and fearful.

"Here, I'm here," she called back waving at us as she caught sight of us on the ridge. I waved back to let her know I'd seen her. "I need your help. The dragon is hurt really bad." I nodded, though she probably didn't see and raced down the path and into the grove, stopping near her backpack with Toothless behind me, though he stayed several paces away until the dragon knew we were friends, unwilling to risk a fight with Bella so close. The dragon growled angrily at the side, his eyes told me he was fearful, but also protective of his new master and I had to restrain the urge to throw my fist up in the air as I saw Bella pet him to calm him and keep him from standing. She was doing instinctively what she needed to do to work with her new partner, something I had to teach everyone else, but she did without any instruction. Pride swelled in my heart as the dragon calmed under her touch and gentle words. "It's okay. They're friends. They just want to help." The dragon locked eyes with her and calmed after a few moments.

"Well done, Bella," I told her. She looked at me confused. I grinned "You handled him very well, Bella. Even I wouldn't have been able to calm Toothless that quickly when he's as injured as your friend here is." I gave him a small grin. "Now Bella, as you are his trainer now, and the dragon trusts you, you need to show him he can trust me so that I can look him over." She nodded. "Walk towards me Bella. Now he won't like that since he sees me as a possible threat, so do it calmly. If he growls turn to him and speak to him to let him know it's okay." She did as I said. "Very good Bella. Now take my arm and lead me to the dragon. I'll take care of the rest." She did as I said and led me over to her new friend. I held his hand out and turned my face away. The dragon sniffed my hand, probably smelling him on my skin, then placed his head against the hand.

"He didn't purr. He did with me," Bella observed with surprise and confusion. I had to grin to myself, there was much I needed to teach her. On the one hand she passed test 4, handling introductions to newly trained dragons. When we got him back home, I needed to prepare her for test 5: dragon care, that is, if she didn't pass it on her own. It was so refreshing having a trainer with natural talents after so long of working with trainers who had to be taught everything since the cradle. I smirked to myself. I guess it was in her blood.

I was surprised. "He didn't purr. He did with me."

"It's alright. He wouldn't purr for me. He's giving me his trust, but his loyalty is to you. That's what the purr means."

"But Toothless purrs. And he did the first time."

He nodded. "You petted him. Toothless loves that so he purred in contentment. The first time he did it, he was trying to put you at ease. He does that on occasion when he's introduced to a child of mine who is fearful. She nodded, understanding. "Now let's take a look at your friend here."

The wound was worse than I thought it was from the ridge. It was badly infected, weeks old from the looks of it. Thankfully it didn't get any organs or arteries but that was a small comfort since the gashes had opened the abdominal cavity on one side. Cleary we had found him barely in time. I was suddenly unsure if he would make it, having checked to see he was in fact a boy and much younger that Toothless, about Bella's own age more or less. Bella wanted to know how bad it was. I explained it to her and then directed her on what I needed to help her poor friend, subtly teaching her in order to prepare her for exam 5. Who knows, maybe she would pass all of them by the time we left here in two days when the storm passed. It was even more imperative that we get to Berk quickly so Astrid and I would forgo sleep in order to take turns sailing 24/7. It wasn't necessary for us to sleep since we were vampires, just something we enjoyed, but we would forgo it and take turns with the ship while caring for him and the kids. I sighed. I couldn't carry him. If I did I would only hurt him more. Normally I would have made a sling and then helped Toothless pull him, but there were no suitable materials here on the island after all the trees were lost in that storm. Toothless would have to carry him. But I worried about his breathing. His lungs were full of water. From the looks of the area around the lake, it looked like he'd attempted to get fish and nearly drowned, and his injuries probably added to the congestion. Luckily Bella found just the plant I needed to get the water out of his lungs and I was very proud of her. However, caring for the dragon meant she had to feed him and do this for her. I explained and Bella followed through, though she had been surprised. I hadn't wanted to throw the danger she was in in her face but she was balking at the chance to take on a dragon and I couldn't let her. He wouldn't survive without her now, especially since he couldn't fly. I didn't have the heart to point this out to her yet, but I noticed that, like Toothless before him, he had lost one of his tail wing and without that he couldn't fly or swim. He needed her to survive now, as Toothless needed me.

Bella had also seemed very surprised at the knowledge I possessed of my kind, clearly the Cullens had either not shared much or had not known it. Knowing Aro, probably the latter. I could see her curiosity had been peeked, though. She finished feeding the mixture to the dragon and he nuzzled into her side. I grinned. "He's saying thank you. The mix takes effect pretty fast to he's now feeling much more comfortable, plus it tastes good."

She nodded and petted him gently. 'You're welcome." Then turned to Hiccup. "How do we get him back to the camp though?"

"His other side is not as injured as this one. I'll pick him up on that side and set him on Toothless' back since he's a little too injured for me to carry him," Hiccup explained as he picked my dragon up. Wait my dragon, was I taking this on so quickly? Though it would be cool to have one. The dragon, however, had other ideas and flailed as he was being picked up.

"It's okay, It's okay. We're just taking you home with us so that we can take care of your injuries. You'll be alright," she told him as she frantically petted his head. He calmed a bit but still refused to be picked up.

"This is weird. It's like he doesn't want to leave. Toothless can you ask him what's wrong?" he said to his dragon.

The shock on Bella's face was priceless. She had understood the purrs and growls of Toothless asking what was wrong. The dragon's answer was harder to read even for me. Something about the cave, like he protected something.

"They can talk?" she asked.

I grinned. "No, not really, but their vocal cords can make purr sounds that sound like words. It takes dragons a while to learn how to do this and the trainer has to develop a bit of an ear for it to understand what the dragon's trying to tell you. We call it Dragonese, the language of dragons which is part purrs and growls and part body language. It's not that uncommon. Cats and dogs make certain sounds to mean certain things and over time their owners learn to decipher it if they pay enough attention or children when they can't speak, cry in certain tones to indicate what they want."

"Could you make out what he said?" she wondered.

He shook his head. "Barely. It was something about the cave or guarding the cave. I'm not sure. It's obvious he hasn't been around humans enough to develop the purr patterns that sound like words yet. I can tell you this though, he won't budge. We need to figure out what's in the cave." She nodded as I started making a torch for her. Astrid forgot the flashlight but had added the torch oil so it could do for now and she wasn't going in alone.

"What are you doing?"

He smiled. "I'm making a torch for you. I'll go in with you of course but you can't see in the dark. Astrid was thorough as always but forgot to include a flashlight. She did, however, include the oil for torches, but I guess she forgot that you aren't used to this kind of thing. I don't think you've ever been camping before now, have you?" She shook my head. "Well it's one more thing we'll fix while you're here."

"I'm not much of an outdoors girl," She told him as I had Toothless light the torch.

I smiled. "It's not about being outdoorsy, Bella. It's about survival skills. Say that when you and Charlie go back to Alaska, you get into a car wreck and while you're both fine you're now lost in the middle of one of the most inhospitable forests in the world. What do you do? You can't really relay on you father for everything. He might know some things about camping in the area he's lived in for so many years, but not Alaska. Or say that you go for a walk in the wooded trails near your home, but trip and fall down an embankment. You're fine, just a few bumps and bruises but now you're off the trail and got turned around in the fall and don't know where you are. What do you do until help comes? How do you find water and food and shelter? It's really not that uncommon, Bella, for people to get into survival situations when they are doing something normal and not dangerous at all. I'm not saying we'll turn you into a big outdoors lady but at least you'll know you'll be able to take care of yourself if you get into trouble. Now here, take the torch and lead the way. He trusts you so he won't have as much of a problem with this if you go first." She nodded taking the torch and we began walking into the cave. "Oh, at some point you're going to have to figure out a name for your new friend, Bella." She nodded as we began the trek into the cave.

The cave was blacker than night. Honestly even my vampire eyes were having a little trouble peering in the gloom after the light from the entrance faded so I was grateful for the torch as well and regretted not making 2 of them almost immediately. The cave was deep and I had to wonder if we would have trouble, but then I knew Toothless, who had stayed outside with the other fury to protect him would come get us. As we walked I noticed Bella tripping over rocks. Guess Charlie was right, she did have balance issues, and I knew where they came from: balance issues were a possible side effect of her treatments years ago, once again a small price to pay and I knew well how to help her correct them. She wasn't the first klutzy child I had dealt with. Then we came to a fork in the road, before us there were two entrances.

"Which way do we go?" Bella asked.

I looked at the ground reading the tracks on the soft dirt. "There are tacks all over this floor. It also seems like there may have been another dragon in here not too long ago." I pointed at each track. "These large marks with long claws belong to a Monstrous Nightmare. Beside it are the marks of the Night Fury, they look kind of like tubes with short claws. From the looks of it. Your friend came in here following the Nightmare whose tracks lead to the left tunnel, but never go to the right, whereas the fury tracks go in and out of both tunnels. I smell water to the right which tells me there's an underground lake or river that way. There is also dried blood on the ground leading to the left tunnel. I can't tell whose, but it's a safe bet that whatever the Monstrous Nightmare had come here for, is what your friend won't leave behind, so we go left. If we don't find anything there, then we'll search the right tunnel." Bella nodded and I took the torch from her. "Stay behind me this time, we don't know what is in there." She nodded and followed me into the tunnel. I led the way into the tunnel with Bella right behind me. I smelled something this way as soon as we entered, blood, old blood, weeks old. As I swung the torch to the right where the scent was coming from I saw it. "Bella, sweetie, don't look to the right, you don't want to see this," I told her, turning to shield her from the sight.

"What is it? And what's that smell? It's awful."

"It's a cadaver," I told her, being honest but shielding her from the sight of the rotten corpse. "The Monstrous Nightmare that attacked your friend is dead against that wall. Go back outside and wait for me there. Here take the torch, I'll look around to see what may be here and join you in a minute." Bella wasted no time, taking the torch and running out. Now that Bella was gone, I could look things over better and I was grateful for the small opening in the celling that let in plenty of light for me to look around the cave. Bella's friend sure did a number on the Nightmare, broke its neck, ending the fight, but those claws were most assuredly what caused his injuries. From the size, I'd say it was a male, though I wouldn't touch the rotten body to check, not wanting to pick anything up when I had humans and an injured dragon in my charge. "Why did you come in here?" I wondered at the corpse. Clearly there was something here valuable enough that Bella's friend would have died for it. I looked around the cavern to see if I could find something. A strange circle of rocks caught my attention and I bent down to examine it more closely. There was dried grasses on the inside as if a cushion and also shards of some kind of gem rock. I picked up one of the larger shards to examine it. The outside was black as ebony and glittered in the dim light. Then I gasped, recognizing it. "An egg? A nest?" It couldn't be. The dragon outside was male not female… My eyes widened in shock and I ran out of the cavern to meet up with Bella, appearing as if out of nowhere to her eyes.

"What is it? What's wrong ancestor?" Bella wondered confused as I suddenly appeared in front of her.

I had to gasp in air realizing I had yet to draw breath and had no air to speak. "Bella, there's another Night Fury in here."

Her eyes widened as she looked at me in confusion. "What?"

I nodded. "On the opposite side of the cadaver was a circle of dark rocks that caught my attention. I looked it over and inside found the shards of an egg, as black as ebony. It was a nest. Your friend risked his life to protect his nest, possibly even his female. It looked like the Nightmare might have broken the egg, a common practice with wild dragons; when they want to steal territories from other dragons they attack and destroy their nests. From the marks on the dried grasses and the tracks on the ground, I imagine there were more than just the one and that they moved the nest to protect them and also because of the cadaver, so the hatchlings won't get sick and die. That's what your friend is protecting, he's either defending his eggs or even hatchlings or mate, possibly both. If the Nightmare got to the nest, it's possible she's still alive and that together they defeated the nightmare."

"Then she must be the other cavern."

"I would imagine so, they would need to drop the eggs into the water if it's deep enough to absorb the shock of the explosion of the eggs."

"The eggs explode?"

I nodded, thinking. "Yes, at least other dragon eggs do. Don't know about the Night Fury's. I've never seen one and some eggs don't explode, though most do." I nodded to myself coming to a decision. "Listen Bella. You have to be the one to go in first. If the female is there, you have the scent of her mate so she will know to at least give you the benefit of the doubt. I can't be the one because I also have the scent of another Fury on me, she may think he killed her mate and I came for her. If she's gone, we'll need to check the island to find her. I doubt, however, that she is, with an injured mate and eggs to protect, she's most likely here. She hasn't come out though; I would have expected that she would to investigate us when we entered the cavern. If she hasn't come out she's either guarding her babies or too injured to move, like your friend." I nodded. "I'll keep the torch and enter behind you. I'll only be a few steps away. Walk in slowly and speak to her calmly, do exactly as you did with the other one. Do you have any more fish?"

She nodded. "There were still a few more in the backpack."

I nodded. "I'll go get it. Be right back." I ran out of the cave and found the Tupperware. There were only 2 fish left so I seceded to run to the lake and grabbed a few more. She would be far more wary than her mate since she was standing guard over her babies. Luckily the fish were big in the lake and I managed to catch 10 more. I had to remember to thank my wife for packing the fish. It was a great stroke of luck to have had them to win the male's trust. As I ran back into the cave, forcing myself to use human speed so as not to alarm the male, I grabbed the other blanket and quickly rubbed the male down, making him purr. The scent lingered on the cloth and I tore a piece of it to give to Bella. More scent of her mate could only help. I handed Bella the fish and the cloth when I saw her and together we walked into the cavern on the right after I took the torch. This cavern also had a small whole in the roof that let in the light of the gloomy day. However, this cavern had reflective mineral deposits that made the whole area glitter and amplified the light. It had a small lake of very dark water that I thought might be good for hatching the eggs. It was also about twice the size of the antechamber and the other cavern combined. At the far end of the cavern stood what we were looking for. Another Night Fury, the female, stood guard over a nest of large ebony gems. I had to swallow my gasps. She was lovely. And so rare. But my gasps were for the nests. I could tell that inside it contained many eggs. The largest cash of eggs by a single pair I'd seen. I'd have to get closer to count them all since she partially shielded the nest, but I was thrilled. This was hope for the species. Now Bella was remarkably calm as she faced the female and spoke to her, tossing her fish.

"It's alright. We're friends," Bella told her as she gave her the fish. "We just want to help you. You're mate let us come in."

"Toss her the cloth with the scent along with another fish," I told her as she walked towards the female. I smiled as she followed my instructions. I could tell the female was wary in my presence and so took a few steps back. I was fast enough to grab Bella if things got hairy but I didn't want to complicate things by making the female think I was a threat. Dragons, unlike all other animals, didn't naturally see vampires as a threat. Their being able to kill us by setting us on fire was a big plus on their side, plus dragon claws could cause serious damage to vampires. And dragon blood was completely unappetizing to vampires, even vegetarians. It smelled nice, like a flower smalls nice, but not like food at all I'd tasted dragon blood once when I killed a Skrill that had been attacking the village. I hadn't wanted to do it, but it had attacked and destroyed the hatchery and we had lost a number of eggs and dragons because of that, though most had been spared since they were deeper. It had put the Snafflefang dragons in danger of extinction since an earthquake had destroyed their breeding grounds on Outcast Island and we had been trying to preserve the eggs we had saved from there along with the wild pairs we had gathered. I'd bitten and killed the dragon. The blood tasted bad and from there on we had known they were not edible. The only thing dragons had to fear was other dragons: dragon fights were vicious as Bella's friend learned the hard way. They would kill each other, like any other animals, for the rights to breeding females, for territory or to protect their young, but they had no natural enemies.

I had to contain the urge to toss my fist into the air again, but I couldn't help but grin like a fool as Bella finally stood at arm's length of the dragon. She'd done an excellent job all on her own. The female was calm in her presence, and seemed curious about Bella, probably hoping for more fish. As Bella reached out her hand to the dragon, letting her come to her, I called out to her. "Look away from her and close your eyes, but leave your hand held out. Let her come to you." She did as I told her and the female sniffed her hand before touching her head with her hand. She didn't purr but relaxed against Bella's touch as she petted her and fed her fish by hand. I wanted to jump up and down, I was so thrilled and proud of Bella. Once I could tell she was calm I instructed Bella to introduce me as she had before. Once she trusted me I could finally get a good look at her. She was in remarkably better shape, clearly her mate has taken the brunt of the damage in the fight, but she had not escaped, unscathed, either. Her tail wings were injured and infected, though both were present. She too had several infected gashes, but not as deep as her mates and she was emaciated, probably couldn't get food with her injuries either. Still, she was in better shape. Then I took a look at the nest and I had to restrain myself from jumping up and down. There were 19 beautiful black gems in it. Nineteen more Night Furies if they were all healthy and hatched successfully, plus the breeding pair was still young, this was perhaps their first breeding, they could still many more. For the first time in my life, I wanted to cry with gladness. I was so grateful to the gods for this marvelous miracle: the Night Furies weren't extinct; Toothless was not the last of his kind. The female was about as old as her mate which meant that out there somewhere there were more Night Furies, the parents of these two possibly even siblings, possible mates for my beloved best friend. I shook my head, there would be time to daydream later. We had to save these two.

"Are these the eggs?" Bella asked me and I nodded, setting the touch down on an outcropping of rock that would hold it well. "They're beautiful. They look like egg-shaped obsidian rock."

I nodded. "More like giant egg-shaped pearls but very good, Bella. All dragon eggs look like egg-shaped rocks or minerals of some kind. It's a defense mechanism so that they'll be safe if the parents are away. They are also very strong. You could probably sit on one and they'll support your weight no problem. Dragons usually coil around them to help keep them warm if they lay them on the ground. Some lay them on trees and others in still water." She nodded in understanding. I sighed. We have to convince her to leave with us and let us take the eggs. She's okay with letting us see them, but I doubt she'll let us pick them up. I'm also going to have to call Astrid and get her to go to the ship. We have egg carriers in them. You never know when you might find an abandoned nest. It happens some time. Eggs are disturbed and the parents abandon them or the parents get killed in storms or by other dragons and their eggs are left orphaned. We always keep an eye out for them to rescue them. She'll have to bring back the carriers here. I need you to convince her. She trusts you better because you smell like her mate." She nodded and I whispered instructions in her ear as she spoke to the female.

She petted her head as she spoke. "You know it's not safe here anymore. Other dragons could come and you're already hurt. Come with us. We can take your babies somewhere where they'll truly be safe and we can take care of you and make you strong again…" Bella continued to speak to her, but try as she might the female was reluctant to leave. She liked Bella, even let her pick up one of her eggs, but she wouldn't budge. I knew then what I had to do. I left Bella to continue to try and ran outside.

"You're mate is quite stubborn," I told Bella's dragon as I petted him. "Reminds me of my wife." I laughed. "You know this place is no longer safe." I saw him nod. "If you weren't both hurt, I imagine you would have taken your eggs and moved on. Can you help us convince her?" He nodded again. I picked him up as gently as I could and set him on Toothless's back. It was just to painful for him for me to carry him. I grabbed the radio and called my wife as we walked slowly into the cave.

"_Are you on your way?"_ Astrid asked when she picked up.

"No, not yet. There's a complication." I had to snort in laughter. "Bella should by lottery tickets. She'll make a killing with her luck today."

"_What do you mean?"_

I smiled. "Our dear sweet Bella, didn't just find a Night Fury… She found a pair."

"_**THERE'S TWO OF THEM?!"**_

"Yep. And get this. It's not just any pair of dragons… It's a breeding pair. Male and female. She bonded with the male and the female accepted her."

"_**YOU'RE KIDDINDG ME!"**_

"Nope, and I need you to run to the ship and get some things and bring them back here. I need you to bring all the large egg carriers we've got."

"_**THEY HAVE EGGS?!"**_

I grinned, oh so thankful. "Nineteen oh so lovely giant egg-shaped black pearls. I don't think I've ever seen a more beautiful sight, except when I held our babies in my arms for the first time. They look healthy too, but we'll have to examine them more closely back home. I did find an abandoned nest near the corps of a Monstrous Nightmare male, most likely the one that attacked them, and inside were the shards of what I think may have been more than one egg. The Nightmare must have gotten in the cave and broke the eggs but they managed to save the rest and moved them to the other cavern. If they weren't injured I doubt we would have found them here, they probably would have taken the eggs and left. The female's being stubborn though. She doesn't want to move her nest. But we can't just leave them here. They're pretty badly hurt, though she's in better shape than he is. They'll die without medical treatment."

I heard her sigh. _"Do you want me to bring the tranquilized gun too? If we can't convince her, we'll take them home with us by force."_

I sighed, nodding. "Yes. I'm still hoping that between Bella and her mate, we can convince her, but if not we'll need it. I'm not leaving them here to die. They are far too precious. But Bella they may have a shot, she's stubborn but was willing to let Bella hold one of her eggs. Toothless and I'll take the male inside and see what happens."

"_I'll be there in 10 minutes or so. Charlie's gone off to mope on the other side of the beach so I can run swim to the ship and get everything and run it to you. I'll leave him a note. He's not going to like this, though, since I'm guessing you'll want Bella to keep all of them, even the eggs."_

I smiled sadly. "Yes, but even if I didn't want it, they won't survive without her and us, they cannot be set free. He's lost a tail wing like Toothless and both of hers are damaged and infected though one is better than the other, but she may lose at least one depending on what we find when we get them home. They're emaciated and it looked like he had tried to swim to get fish in the lake and nearly drowned, his lungs were full of water and is still coughing it up a bit. They'll need her to fly and to survive and she needs them for safety though that part Charlie can't know about. He'll have to learn to live with it." We exchanged a few more words and rang off as we entered the cave. The male growled at me. "I don't like it any more than you do. But you aren't safe here. If she won't come on her own then we'll have to make her come. You're babies will die here. It's not safe, but we can provide you with the safety they need and with all the food you could ever want. Ask my friend if you don't believe me," I told him, knowing what worried him. In the time that I had been gone, however, we had a surprise. I listened as they purred and growled at each other, speaking to each other and I could tell that Toothless was trying to convince the other Fury of everything.

As we entered the cave, though I froze in surprise. I watched as Bella petted the female and she in turn rubbed up against her before walking over to her nest and taking an egg into her mouth. She then turned back to Bella and handed her the egg. My mouth just about hit the floor. I had seen that behavior a few times before, though never with a wild dragon. Trained dragons in Berk sometimes took their eggs and handed them to their trainers. It meant that they were trusting their trainers with the lives of their young and would do as the trainer commanded. **THE FEMALE HAD AGREED! **Whatever Bella had done or said had done the trick. Bella looked over to the entrance and saw us. She looked confused.

"What does this mean?" Bella asked as she cradled the egg gently in her arms.

I grinned in triumph. "Bella it means she's agreed to come with us. To move the eggs. It also means she accepts you as her trainer also. Dragons in Berk do this sometimes when they have eggs, particularly with the first clutches after they have a trainer. They take an egg, usually the first they laid and hand them to their trainer as she did. It's the greatest show of trust a dragon can give, since they are handing over the safety of that which is most precious to them, their children. To their trainer. Not every dragon does this and I'd never seen a wild one do that. It's precious." She grinned in understanding as she held the egg a little more firmly. Her mate purred at the female and she came to him and nuzzled his head. I grinned at the display. I saw the curiosity in Bella's eyes and walked to her to take the egg from her and whispered in her ear. "He's thanking her for agreeing and telling her he loves her. She said 'I love you too." I think our new friends are now ready to leave. We'll start taking the eggs out of her. Astrid will be here in a few minutes with the egg carries we have on the ship." She nodded and picked up another egg.

Together we carried them outside, setting them on the sleeping bag from Bella's backpack. By the time we finished carrying the last one out, Astrid had arrived with the carriers. Together the three of us loaded the eggs after Astrid had been introduced to the two dragons. My wife could barely contain her excitement as the beheld these beautiful treasures Bella had found. Once all the eggs were tied down safely, she and I picked up the carriers and began the long trek back to camp, the female walking under her own power beside Bella and Toothless who carried her mate. Astrid asked Bella to recount the whole thing for her and she happily told her everything, the dragons helping her to come out of her shell some more. I smiled as my girls spoke about everything and not just the day's events.

"Bella have you picked out names for them yet? They are yours to name after all," Astrid asked.

Bella thought about the question for a moment. "Actually I have. But I'm not sure…"

"Bella, whatever you want to pick is fine," I told her. Well unless it was a really weird name. "As long as they like them and will repond to them, there is no problem."

She nodded. "I wanted to name the male 'Fury' 'cause he's big and strong and such a bad ass for taking out the other dragon that wanted to hurt them." I grinned, a little cliché but it did fit. She turned to him. "Do you like that name, Fury?" she asked him, and he purred in contentment and rubbed his head against his side. "Does that mean what I think it means?" she asked with a giggle as he tickled her. "EWWW!" she cried with a laugh as he licked her face. "I'll take that to mean yes." Good cause it was, and it was cute too.

"And what about her?" Astrid asked.

Bella grinned, "Nightshade, like the flower."

"Beautiful to look at and deadly if messed with. I think it's perfect," Astrid told her.

"Do you like Nightshade?" Bella asked the dragoness. She purred and licked Bella as she giggled hysterically. Fury and Nightshade it is then.

It took us a while, but we reached the camp just before the rain hit and a good thing too because as I thought, it wasn't just rain but hail too. There was a small cave a bit further down the beach that Astrid told me she had moved the camp to because of the possible hail. Inside the cave, she had set up the tents so that we would all have privacy, the largest being the dragon tent and we took the dragons in there and I got to work on them while the girls set down the eggs in a safe place. They would be better off in the carriers than in a temporary nest, it wasn't safe to move them too much since we didn't know how long ago they had been laid. Fury's tail was badly infected and we needed more supplies for him, but what we had on hand would do for now, until we got him home. I cut away the dead tissue that was left over from the lost wing and cleaned the wounds as well as I could. I cleaned out his side again with the antibiotics and gave him a shot of antibiotics and adrenaline, grateful that I'd thought to bring the field medical kit for dragons instead of just the regular first aid kit. Nightshade was considerably better. Her gashes weren't as deep but were badly infected. I gave her the same medicines and cleaned her up. Her tail was badly infected, the right wing being worse than the left and I was afraid she would need to have it amputated, though I still hoped to save it. After treating them as well as I could out here, we fed them a large meal. They hadn't eaten in weeks given the state of them and the food disappeared as fast as we gave it. I had to refrain myself from giving them more, as over feeding them right now would only make things worse.

By the time the evening rolled around Charlie finally decided to grace us with his presence. He had hidden in another tiny cave when the rain and hail hit. As expected, he was not all too pleased with what he found. "What in the hell is going on here?" he yelled as he saw Bella cuddled up by the fire against Fury's good side, petting Nightshade's head as she lay beside her. Bella had been half asleep and his yell made her jump. Both dragons growled, Nightshade standing protectively over Bella and her mate.

I grabbed Charlie by the arm and dragged him outside. "Do you have a death wish?" I asked him angrily.

He turned his anger on me, but I was so unimpressed, like a kitten hissing and spitting at a lion. I had half a mind to take him over my knee and spank him for being so dumb. "How can you let her near those monsters? They will hurt her. Death wish indeed. Do you want to kill her?" he yelled, getting in my face.

I pushed on his chest, pushing him back. Dumb child. "First of all, they are not monsters and they will not hurt her. They love her, they have given her their loyalty. They would sooner die than harm her and would die to protect her without a moment's thought. Bella told you before. You are the one with an unnatural fear, not her. The only reason they were aggressive was because they were asleep and Bella had nearly fallen asleep against them. When you yelled, you startled them and scared her. Scaring her meant that they became protective because it meant to them there was a threat nearby and I just told you they will protect her with their lives. Get off your high horse Charlie. Bella is not a child. We told you that before."

"So now you've turned her into a monster master, like the rest of that miserable island. And you're now going to keep her by force like everyone else. I won't allow it. We're going home."

Seriously, Charlie was pushing my buttons. "They are not monsters, I told you that already, and no one is trapped here. They can leave when they want."

"And this was all up to me, Charlie," came a voice from the entrance of the cave. We turned at the same time though I had already smelled her. Bella stood at the mouth of the cave. "In case you've forgotten. I am 18 years old, legally an adult and I do as I want and you have no say. If I want to be a dragon trainer then it's up to me. And I do. I love my new pets and want to learn all about them. So deal with it or I move out… Wait, your house is unfit to keep them. So I'll move out anyway but I will thank you to stop insulting my pets or I won't be going around you anymore. I will not deal with your hang ups. You don't like it, too bad. Not my problem." With that she turned and went back to the cave.

I couldn't have said it better myself. I turned back. "Shape up Charlie or you will lose her. You wanted help for her. Well, meet your daughter. In the short time, she's been with them they've brought her out of her shell. She's happier. She was giggling all the way back here as they tickled her. She wanted to learn more and grilled us with a thousand questions and helped take care of them. They've pulled her out of her shell, she's not out of the woods, that still will take time, but she's more herself now and more focused. I haven't seen her retreat once since she found them, nor have I seen her depressed once. They did in one afternoon, what you couldn't do. She was even proud, though surprised, when I told her she had passed 3 of the 5 tests to become a dragon trainer. She also passed the 4th shortly after and only has one more which has several parts to it to be a dragon trainer. I already spoke to her about her taking her birthright ceremony. You know the one you refused point blank. She wants it. Granted she's a little old for it, but it doesn't make any difference. This is what you wanted, it doesn't make a difference how it happened as long as it helps her. Grow up Charlie, or you're going to lose her. She's an amazing girl and all you've ever done is hold her back from achieving her true potential." With that, I turned and went back to the cave. It was a quiet evening after that. Charlie wouldn't speak to anyone and right now we were all fine with that. After dinner everyone went to sleep, Bella sleeping with her dragons in the medical tent and she had no nightmares that night.

The next morning the storm had blown over and we returned to the ship, taking the dragons ahead with Bella. It was an uneventful voyage. As planned, Astrid and I didn't sleep, taking turns sailing the ship which was a good thing since the waters were rough because of the storm's passage. Whenever we weren't sailing we were with Bella and her dragons. As the days passed I saw more and more of the girl she was before he left her. Her eyes were still full of sadness, missing her partner, but she was much better. She even asked my wife for a book to read and was listening to music in her room as she spent time with her pets. She read to them and listened to music with them. The time on the ship with her new friends seemed to be what she needed to come out of her shell. She still needed him, there was no question about that, but at least she started to interact with the world. Arriving in Berk was a welcome sight. We had made good time, arriving 2 days ahead of schedule and we quickly took the dragons to the clinic for more intensive care. It was touch and go but we would make sure they survived. Now it was time for Bella's training to begin…

* * *

_**Chapter End Note:** I know, I know. I've been really hard on Charlie in this chapter, but there were many truths he needed to face up to and he needs to do it soon, he may not be around for long... Bella needs him to step back, he's only making things worse and Hiccup and Astrid don't have any qualms about telling it like it is, they know better than anyone how much he's hurting Bella with his behavior. And yes I did say he may not be around long **SPOILER ALERT!** I plan for him to have an encounter with a vampire. Haven't decided how that will go yet. Depends on his behavior and whether or not Bella needs him later..._


	5. 4 The Barbarian Archipelago Pt 1: ISLE

**_Author's Note: _** _Hello to all my loyal reader. Sorry this has taken so long but I was really having trouble with this chapter. I hope it's worth the wait. The next part of this chapter will be about Bella's training to become a dragon trainer. As well as a few more surprises. I'm not sure when the next chapter will be up since I am currently studying for my nursing license exam and have to concentrate on that, but I hope to have it up soon. I won't place the story on hiatus since I'm still working on it when I get the chance. In fact this chapter was completed a week ago, but I forgot to post it. And the next chapter has already been started. I will also place on my profile soon the pictures of Fury and Nightshade so be sure to look for them. I'll probably post them with the next chapter so watch out for them. We'll see you soon. _ **_Sailor FoxFire_**

* * *

**4\. The Barbarian Archipelago pt. 1: Isle of Berk**

**Bella POV**

The sight of land was a most welcome vista after two weeks at sea. How people did this when trips took months, even years, was beyond me. I stood in the bridge with my ancestors whom in the last couple of weeks I'd begun to call Mamman and Poppa when Charlie was not in earshot. It was so nice having someone I could finally talk to, who understood me and my feelings, and whom I knew would be grownups to me. Charlie stayed in his cabin pretty much the whole trip after we had left the tiny island where we had found Fury and Nightshade. My new pets were doing well according to my ancestors, they were still in great need and would take weeks if not months to get better but they were on the mend. However Poppa had no choice but to amputate Nightshade's right tail wing 4 days ago. He hadn't wanted to, but the infection had been getting worse instead of better and she'd developed a very high fever and stopped eating; it was amputation or losing her and she was too valuable to lose, not only because she was my pet but also because she is the only known female Night Fury and was of breeding age, a fact that for a species that seems nearly extinct is too valuable to lose. After the amputation she stabilized and recovered quickly I worried that it meant that she too would never fly again but Mamman reassured me that that was not the case at all. Poppa could make her and Fury new prosthetic tail wings for both of them and that they would take well to them. He would have started them with one of Toothless's spare wings, but they weren't healthy enough for that. The one thing that I had loved most about the trip was that my ancestors had begun my training the minute we got back to the ship to continue the trip. As we got closer to the island, I though back to all I had learned in such a short amount of time…

**Flashback**

_Boarding the ship with two injured dragons had been a production. Neither Fury nor Nightshade had ever been on a boat and were understandably skittish. Poppa had taken the eggs first and situated them in a protected alcove in the cargo hold. We'd have to monitor them, after all, no one wanted them to hatch in the ship. If it was true that the eggs exploded then it would spell disaster at sea. Cajoling them into the boats had been my job as their trainer and after a lot of coaxing and even more fish; I had finally succeeded in getting them both into the boat to head to the ship. Poppa set them up in the cabin right in front of mine, however, I pretty much changed cabins so I could stay with them. It had been months since I'd had a descent night sleep without nightmares and, while I still had them on the boat, at least my pets soothed me back to sleep, though I'm not sure how. Stepping out of Fury and Nightshade's room I ran into Mamman and as she was coming down._

"_Oh good Bella. I was looking for you," she told me as she spotted me. "Since we do have a rather long trip still ahead, Hiccup and I decided that it would be wise to begin your training now."_

"_Now, in the middle of the ocean?" I asked, confused._

_She smiled. "Dragons are amphibian. You need to be able to handle that. But that's not all we are referring to." She stepped closer to me to whisper in my ear so as not to take a chance that Charlie might overhear from his room. "You know that we know more about vampires and the other supernaturals than the Cullens know. They taught you some things but nowhere near enough simply because they didn't know it. You need to know all that we know and put it to use. Knowledge is power, Bella, and you need that power in order to survive in the real world." I nodded. It did make sense. She raised her voice and stepped back as Charlie opened his door. "Why don't we get started? It's still a long way and we can get you ready for your next exam. You've already passed exams 1- 4, you only have one more to become a full-fledged dragon rider and entrance trainer. You want to do that right?"_

"_She does not," Charlie interrupted before I could answer as he came out of his room. "And she will be staying away from those monsters from now on."_

_I had to grind my teeth in order to hold on to my temper, but Charlie was pushing my buttons. "Who are you to tell me what to do?" I said, losing the battle. I interrupted him before he could start. "In case you have forgotten Charlie, I will remind you that I am legally an adult capable of making my own decisions and you have no say in what I do. You wanna play parent? TOO LATE. Should have tried it when I needed one, but now I take care of myself. I told you last night that you have no say in what I do or don't do and I will warn you one last time. Stop insulting my pets or I refuse to be around you anymore. And I will not deal with your ridiculous issues. Now if you'll excuse us, Astrid and I have things to do. And don't go in my room, I moved across the hall to be with my pets." With that, I took Astrid's hand and we walked up the stairs to the deck. However my rage just wouldn't settle down and I had to let it out… So I screamed, long and loud until I got it all out… and it was more than just Charlie._

"_Feel better?" Astrid asked with a small smile. "Good thing the cabins are soundproof or Fury would have thought I was murdering you," she joked._

_I gave her a small smile. "Yeah, sorry."_

_She shook her head. "You've had to deal with a lot and you need to let it out somehow or it will consume you." I sighed and nodded, she was the only one who understood. She smiled. "Come along to the bridge with me and we'll start." I nodded and followed her. I'd never seen a ship's bridge, except on the movie __**Titanic**__._ _And I wasn't sure what to expect, but I wasn't disappointed. The room was full with all sorts of gadgets and computers I had no name for. Pretty much the only thing I recognized was the helm and I had to pat myself on the back for remembering that much since I'd never been on a boat before. Guess I could take out one thing from the bucket list. __See a ships bridge in your lifetime.__ Check. Astrid noticed my looking around and grinned. "Not what you expected ay?" She grinned as she looked around with me. "It used to be that the bridge on ships was much less complicated. Just the helm and nothing more, most of the time it was even outside. Like the ships in pirate movies or the__**Little**__**Mermaid**__." She pointed at the room in front. "That's the map room. It's closer to what we used in the old days. Though here we have all the techno toys Hiccup adores and we do make use of them. The map room is useful for studying charts, and doing things in a way closer to what we used to do. It also contains the second helm. These waters are treacherous on good days. It pays to have two helmsmen at times to steer the ship since it lets us make more complicated turns and quicker to avoid disaster. You never really know when a huge block of ice might suddenly appear."_

"_There are icebergs in these waters?" I wondered, not really keen on reliving the Titanic… especially when my own personal Jack Dawson wasn't here for the good scenes._

_She nodded. "Sometimes, though most of the time we see ice sheets. As global warming occurs we are seeing less and less ice, which is bad for these waters."_

_I was confused. "Why?"_

_Hiccup answered. "The ice sheets help contain the blasts from the underwater geysers. Without it plumes of hot water and steam yet out with nothing in the way of them. Some of the geysers are as big as islands. Get caught in one and its bye, bye. Also ice makes for good resting places for dragons in between flight. Without them they have to get wet if they are in an area where there's no land mass to speak of."_

"_Also we Vikings always worked with the ice using it as it was useful and some plants can't grow right with the change in temperature, plants that were needed to treat diseases actually went extinct including a pain relief we knew about in our youth, one that was as good as Demerol with fewer side effects and no addiction." I nodded. It was yet another example of what we had studied in class, and a great shame._

"_And added to this, the dragon breeds don't tolerate hotter climates very well. It's making it harder for them to survive. And a few have even gone extinct or are on the way."_

"_But I thought that they would tolerate it better? They are reptiles and reptiles can't stand the cold."_

_Astrid shook her head. "Other reptiles, absolutely. But not dragons. They breathe fire. Stoker class dragons can set their bodies on fire. These dragons are all specific to the colder temperatures. They have trouble regulating their temperature. Since they are exothermal like all reptiles they rely on their environment to control their temperature. They produce fire from within and that keeps them warm. It's why they feel like they are radiating their own heat, in essence they are. But they rely on the colder temperature to control their internal temp. Too much heat equals a sick dragon, and too little is fatal, in fact dragons will die if they overuse and lose their fire. It's why eel pox is so dangerous to them. Dragons suited for hotter climates, in theory since we've never seen any, regulate their temperatures differently though we have no way of knowing how. As far as we know, the dragons here are the last and they may become extinct."_

_I was quiet as I absorbed all of this. After a minute, Astrid interrupted my thoughts. "But enough talk about the gloom and doom things. We'll be using the map room as a makeshift school room to teach you. It's private, can only be accessed through this room and we have computer access as well as a desk. And yes there is going to be a book and written portion of learning. It's not all fun and games with dragons and flying. You also need to know data on them so you can better care for them and deal with any wild dragons you might find." She turned and picked up a box filled with several books and led me into the map room leaving the door ajar so that I could hear Hiccup as well since he was currently steering the ship. "This box contains several books you will need to know. RELAX!" she said while looking at my wide eyes. "You're not in any way, shape or form expected to memorize them all. In fact, you won't be tested on all of the information in here. The next exam is the Dragon Husbandry and care exam, its first portion is a written exam, the rest is practice. In fact most exams are practical not textbook, but you need the facts in order to be able to complete the tasks. Hiccup actually started teaching you what you need to know for the exam when you found Fury and Nightshade. Now the first book you have to know is this one," she said handing me a thick volume. "The dragon manual. Everything we know about every dragon we know of. It's gone through more incarnations than I care to count going so far back to long before either of us was born, though it has changed just as much. You can actually see the oldest manual in the museum in Berk which was the one that Hiccup and I used when we were first learning to be Vikings and kill dragons. Also the very first one that Hiccup wrote and altered for training them. Then there is this." She handed me a spiral bound notebook with a snap seal that had a picture of my two Night Furies on the cover as well as some crests. "It's your field guide. It's part workbook and part notebook. You can use it to take your own notes on everything you're learning as well as review key knowledge kept here. It's divided into categories like botanical guide, dragon guide, my partner, maps, and so on." Astrid flipped through it to show me. _

"_We made the cover for you last night. Most trainers like to have pictures of their partner on it and so we put your two furies into it. You can see that in the corners is a crest or symbol. Upper left is the Berk Dragon Academy Crest, that's your school. Snoggletog as well as the other 4 hidden towns that sprung from our old camp have their own schools but the Berk Academy is the oldest and most revered. Most students actually want to move to Berk and go there to study dragons since we are more than just an academy. We're the only one that goes from preschool age all the way to post graduate and here you can learn to be more than just a trainer. You can go for the title of Dragon Master, also learn to breed dragons as well as be a dragon vet. Upper right is the crest of the Hooligan Tribe. And bottom left is the crest of the Haddock family, which is the family you belong to. It's the same as the crest of the Academy since it was founded by Hiccup but it's encircled by an everlasting ring whereas the crest of the Academy has to fireballs surrounding it."_

_I noticed the symbols on the bottom right. "What are these?" I asked pointing as the symbols on the bottom right._

_**Isabella Marie of the Haddock Clan**_

_**Daughter of the Chief Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III**_

_**and**_

_**His wife, Astrid Haddock of the Hoffersen Clan.**_

_She smiled. "That is your name. Your true name at least. You see. The last name Swan was an invented name your great grandfather took when he moved to the US. Your actual last name is Haddock. It says __**Isabella Marie of the Haddock Clan Daughter of the Chief Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III and His wife, Astrid Haddock of the Hoffersen Clan.**__ I was born a Hoffersen but married into the Haddock clan. It's written in Viking runes. The letters we were taught as children and we use them to engrave these books." She flipped to the back cover. "On the back we engraved the names of your dragons. Most trainers, if they have more than their partners, tend to keep lists of all the dragons they train or have as their own." I smiled, liking my present. They really had gone all out for me. She pulled out the other books showing me each one and explaining what they were for: __**Dragon Husbandry and Care, Flight Manual for Beginners, Field Guide to Survival on the Barbarian Archipielago. History of the hooligan Tribe,**__ and so on…_

**End of Flashback **

Going to school on the boat was actually fun, and yes that is the first time ever a teenager has thought that school is fun. I loved learning more about dragons, especially my own. But my most favorite lesson of all was flying. I smiled at the memory of my first flight.

**Flashback**

_Neither Fury nor Nightshade were able to fly yet, they were too injured to even try to fit them with one of Toothless's spare tail wings so the only option was Toothless. For the first time out, Hiccup took me up letting me get the feel for the air. At first I reacted like I had on the back of Edward. I closed my eyes against the speed, terrified. But then I felt something weird. Beneath me Toothless's body was vibrating, then I realized he was purring. Surprised I opened my eyes to look at him and he was looking right back at me with a smile, his big eye gentle and I could read the message there. __**Relax, I'll take care of you,**__ and I did relax, I couldn't help it. I found the purr so soothing especially after sleeping against Fury's side and feeling him purr as I slept. Now calm, I looked around and it was so wonderful. I felt so free. I could tell that Hiccup and Toothless were taking it easy to let me get used to the air, and I was glad since I had a feeling this would be way more than riding on Edward's back. After a couple of hours playing in the sky we came back into the boat for a landing. _

"_That was so fun," I told Hiccup as he helped me off of the dragon._

_He smiled. "I'm glad you enjoyed that."_

"_Could we do it again?" I asked as I petted Toothless and rubbed his head._

_He grinned. "Sure, after lunch. Mamman says it's ready. That's why we landed."_

_That brought something else up that I was curious about. "You know I've been meaning to ask but I thought it was rude."_

"_You know you can ask anything Bella," he reminded me as we walked to the dining room, his arm around my shoulders in a very paternal way that just never worked with me and Charlie. It felt so nice._

_I wasn't sure how to voice my question, but I started anyway. "Well, I noticed you eating…"_

_He laughed. "Is that it? You were wondering how we can eat?" I nodded sheepishly. He laughed. "Believe it or not, it's not the first time someone wonders. A few other vampires that have found their way to the island over the years and have been confused seeing what we do. Most told us that all they do with food is pretend like they eat and toss it away. If they eat it, it taste horrible and living on an island where everyone is aware of what we are and thus removing the need for pretend it made them exceedingly curious. I guess you never knew it could be done, did you?"_

_I shook my head. "All the Cullens ever did was pretend to eat. If they couldn't avoid it. They said that food tasted horrible if they were forced to eat and then it had to expelled later."_

_He nodded. "Normal food yes, it is nasty and needs to be expelled… But there are ways around everything."_

"_Is that your power then, eating human food?" I wondered out loud._

_He laughed. "Clearly Mamman and I need to get around to teaching you about vampires, but we wanted to wait to get to the island in case Charlie might walk in on us. It would be much harder for him to do that at the academy or our house than here. Well no better time than now I suppose." He pulled me to the side into an alcove after making sure my father was nowhere in sight. "No, it's not our power. In fact it's not even a power, every vegetarian vampire can do it. They just need to prepare it the right way." _

"_Prepare it?"_

_He nodded. "Yes prepared. It's actually something we were wondering about for many years before deciding to investigate it. Both Mamman and I missed being able to eat like before. It was just one of the things we missed. The weird thing was that we could smell the food and it smelled nice to us, at least the one made by our people, not so much the one made by other people that we met in our travels. It was strange and it made me curious. About 200 years ago, Mamman and I were traveling across Asia when we met a coven of 4 vampires, two couples that were also vegetarians. It's not that uncommon for vampires to decide to become vegetarian, it depends on what their own conscience tells them and how they were raised among other things. We got together and started talking. They are the ones that gave me the ideas. You see they spoke of a plant that smelled delicious to vampires. They even showed it to us. It's a Chinese herb that has a scent like the blood of animals mixed with vanilla. It made me that much more curious because it smelled edible. I tried it and it did taste nice, not really edible but good though I did have to expel its remains afterwards. The herb is poisonous to humans but I took samples of it to do some research back home. For over 100 years nothing came of it until one day out of the blue we went on a picnic with some of our descendants. Now years earlier we had become able to feed without attacking a person, my being allergic to human blood helped but for a long time we had fed with humans and human scent nearby. It had become a sheer necessity to completely lock our instinct to feed on people out of our minds even while in the throes of the hunt. So we hunted some deer and brought it back to the picnic and ate them while everyone else ate food. There was a piece of cake right in front of me and I accidentally spilled some blood on it. While I'm not normally a messy eater I had accidentally sliced the deer's side with my nails and the blood spilled over._

"_It was funny. And I was a bit embarrassed but laughed it off with everyone else. Now we have the habit of skinning and feeding the animals' meat to our people. It's perfectly good to eat, the venom doesn't taint it so we prepared the meat and had a barbeque. One thing kept bothering me though. The cake smelled nice. Now no human food hadn't smelled nice to be since I was human with a few notable exceptions, though they didn't smell edible either. Mamman was wondering the same thing as I. While the meat cooked we decided to play a game and the kids wanted to play truth or dare. They dared me to eat the cake that had the blood on it, no one had gotten around to tossing it since it was no longer edible for them. I sighed and took a bite of the cake and my eyes flew wide open. It was nice. I mean it was still inedible but it tasted nice. After that picnic, I decided to restart the research on the plant. We had been using it for years to make medicine for asthma, that was its intended use, but I added blood to the mix. After a few tries we finally found the answer. The reason the plant tasted nice and the reason the cake had tasted nice… was the blood. The plant is carnivorous. It eats small rodents when full grown and the cake had soaked in blood."_

"_So you were tasting the blood then?"_

_He shook his head. "We thought so too, but I then remembered how the food my people prepared smelled nice sometimes. They smelled nice when the meat was cooked to medium rare. We kept investigating until we found the answer. If you mix the blood into the food and let it permeate it becomes edible and does not need to be expelled because our bodies do accept it. There are things we can't eat, mainly things that we were allergic to, but other than that we can eat it."_

**End of Flashback**

That had been such a shock to me. He told me more as we continued towards lunch and that afternoon's lesson consisted in part of explaining to me all that they had discovered. It was a great thing to learn. If I ever met the Cullens again I had their permission to share it with them. Esme would have a ball with it, she loved to cook but had no one that would eat it. Now her husband and children … would…

The pain in my chest blindsided me and I had to gasp for breath. This time though it wouldn't go away, nothing could make it calm down again. God I missed them. I was unaware that I was crying until suddenly a pair of slim cold arms wrapped around me helping to hold me together. "Shh, calm down Bella," Mamman whispered in my ear. I couldn't though. My chest was caving in.

"Bella try to take a breath, sweetheart," Poppa said as he appeared at my side. But I couldn't, I just couldn't. I tried to gasp, but nothing worked. And I was chocking in my own pain.

"Is it a panic attack?" I heard Mamman wander. Suddenly a plastic breathing mask was forced over my mouth and nose and helped to force air into my flat lungs.

"It seems like it, but we could pull her out of the last one, but not this one. I'm getting worried about her reactions, Astrid. She's getting worse."

"Is it the separation or could she be changing?" Mamman wondered.

_Changing?_ I thought to myself. "What… you…talk… a…bout?" I gasped out, the pain still flaring in my chest.

Astrid sighed. "We haven't discussed this with you yet because we wanted to get you to Berk first. But Bella, there are things you need to know, things that we need to explain to you that happened during your relationship with your mate that you are not aware of. But we can't do that until this bout is over." I nodded still gasping. Another sharp pain hit my chest but this time it hit my abdomen and I couldn't help but double over. This was so not the same as before. I would have fallen to my knees but Astrid wrapped her arms around me. "Bella what it is, what's wrong?"

I could no longer speak but I grabbed my abdomen. Then I felt myself being picked up. "That's it. Toothless and I will fly her ahead. You get the ship into port Astrid. This is way more than just her normal bouts of pain." I saw Astrid nod as we ran off to find Toothless in the Captain's quarters. Quickly my ancestor climbed onto the back of Toothless with me in his arms before settling me on the saddle. "Hang on Bella. We need to get you to the hospital in Berk." I tried to say my father's name. "Don't worry about your dad, Astrid will deal with him. But we think there's something seriously wrong with you and we need to go now." I nodded weakly feeling like I was going to pass out. I couldn't even enjoy the flight, I was now really scared and in pain. I knew we were still over two hours away from shore, though we could now see the island. Would we make it in time?

We did make it in time. It turned out that I had been right in my assumption that Hiccup and Toothless were taking it easy on me. That dragon was fast. I'd imagine he's as fast in the air as Edward had been on the ground. We made it to the island in just under 10 minutes and landed in the plaza, startling the people there. Hiccup quickly jumped off of Toothless's back and ran with me to the hospital, several of the people trailing behind us. The ones that could keep up were clearly vampires. "Ancestor?" a man asked as he ran with me into the emergency room.

"We have a possible code black heart," he told the man not missing a beat as he set me on a gurney. Code black heart?

"When did the symptoms start?" he asked as he handed Hiccup a lab coat and stethoscope while he took my vitals.

Ancestor ran to prepare but I could hear the answer. "Last September when her mate decided she was in too much danger after an accident during her 18th birthday party. He arbitrarily decided that he had to leave her, and what's worse is that he lied to her and broke her heart while doing so. She's been having bouts ever since but a few minutes ago she had the worst one, looking like she's having a heart attack. She also grabbed her abdomen right where her appendix is." What did that have to do with anything? The mention of the circumstances surrounding my breakup set a hot bolt of pain through my chest and I screamed. "Shh, Bella. It'll be okay, sweetheart," Hiccup said placing a gloved hand against my cheek. He pulled out a needle. "I know you hate these but it'll help with the pain." I nodded and he gave me the shot. Within a few seconds my pain dulled a bit and I was able to breathe easier.

"Overfilled venom bladder?"

"We think so. I noticed she was a little distended this morning. It hadn't been there last night. We were going to bring her in later, but well as you can see we had to run her in, Damian."

I saw Damian nod, but I couldn't have been more confused. "Poppa?" I managed to gasp out.

He sighed. "Bella, there's much we have not told you about vampires, and we don't have the time right now. If what I think is happening, is in fact happening then you are in terrible danger. We have to put you under now so you can be examined and treated. We think that you have a bladder full of venom. What that means is that when you and your boyfriend kissed, you swallowed his venom. Your body had to do something with it. It couldn't accept it because it was poisonous to you. Your body stored it away in your appendix. But we need to check you out. If the venom is leaking then what's going on with you is that you are starting to change. If that's not the case then the bladder might be so full that it might rupture, that would explain the swelling I noticed in your abdomen this morning. It was not there last night. Before we do this though, Bella we need to know one thing. Is there any possible chance you could be pregnant? Vampire males are able to conceive babies with human women, it is our females that are sterile. If you might be pregnant then we need to check you out right away, it could be that as well." I was confused and didn't know what to say. Could there be a chance that… No I was not going there. It would break me in two. I shrugged, confused and not knowing what to say. He nodded. "Don't worry. We'll take care of you." He started an I.V. in my arm. "Sleep tight, sweetheart. We'll have this all figured out when you wake up." I nodded and felt myself drifting off as the medication took effect. With one last parting sigh, I drifted off, oblivious to anything else.

**Hiccup POV**

I had a feeling Bella was holding out on us, but now was not the time. We didn't have the luxury of waiting. We were in the emergency room and my nurses and doctors were working on her after I sedated her. The reason I did was simple. We were going to have to operate. When I held her to me I felt it. There was a large lump in her abdomen. Her venom bladder was about to burst. It still needed to be confirmed though to decide on treatment, so we ran her to the CT-Scan and quickly set to work to take her scans. I sighed in relief as I reviewed her films. While her venom bladder was huge, it wasn't in danger of rupturing yet. We'd gotten her here just in time. A few more hours and her bladder would have ruptured. If that had happened then she was in serious trouble. That much venom delivered so quickly would have overwhelmed her systems and sent her into shock before the transformation could ever begin. It would have been fatal but thankfully that was not the case. Her blood tests also showed she wasn't pregnant so that was good news. She would make it, but we needed to drain her venom bladder to decrease the swelling. Since Bella was already under sedation, we moved her to the operating table and I set to work. Taking a large 60-gage abdominal needle and using x-ray machines to see what I was doing. I inserted the needle into her abdomen and into the appendix which had become her venom bladder. I drained 5 large 60-gage needles out of her, quickly saving it for an emergency. After all Bella would not be able to handle being given the venom of another vampire should something happen or she decides she wants to be turned quicker, not after she had taken so much venom from her mate. If we tried to give her another's venom it would kill her. Now that she was out of danger, we started examining her more thoroughly. After all there was much we still didn't know about her condition. Bella would be out for a while still so she wouldn't feel a thing; a good thing since some of the tests tended to be painful. When the tests were finished I settled Bella in one of the rooms upstairs and waited for the results, she would still be out for some time. While waiting for the results I radioed Astrid to tell her what was going on.

**Astrid POV**

I was so worried about Bella as I watched my husband take off and race her home. Unfortunately that left me to deal with Charlie as he was coming up from his room just now and saw everything. "Where do you think you're taking my daughter?" he yelled at me.

I rolled my eyes. _Gods give me patience,_ I thought to myself counting backwards from 1 million to remain calm. "Hiccup is taking her to the island ahead. She's sick."

That made him do a 180°. "What?"

I sighed. "It just came on. She was clutching her abdomen and crying in pain and could barely breathe. We think it might be appendicitis and if it is time is of the essence so Hiccup is flying her to the hospital in Berk to get checked out."

"Will she be alright? When we'll we be getting there?"

"We're still more than two hours away from the island. I'll sail the ship in and we'll meet them there."

"I want to go with her now."

"And do you plan to swim there then? Toothless was the only flight-capable dragon we have right now, her pets are too sick and injured to fly you there. Besides, right now you'd be more of a hindrance than any help. She's in good hands. Hiccup is the finest and most experienced doctor on the island and there are several others as well. We'll sail in and be there soon. The tides are with us so it may cut some time out of our trip." With that I turned and headed for the helm to continue to pilot the ship. Charlie grumbled at me. Come to think of it, he's acting more like a child not getting his way than a parent concerned for the welfare of his only child. I sighed. I guessed that that was what Bella had to deal with every day. Poor girl. Charlie left me alone and I had to sigh with relief.

Half an hour from port I got the call I'd been waiting for. "Tell me she's alright!" I demanded of my husband.

"_She's fine. She's out of danger. We're still waiting for some results but she pulled through. It was an overfilled venom bladder like we had thought. I pulled 5 60-gage needles out of her. We got to her just in time. A bit longer and she wouldn't have been alright."_

I sighed. I knew what that meant. "Was it leaking?"

He sighed. _"According to the preliminary tests… Yes."_

I sighed again. "Is she transforming?"

"_I'm not sure yet, but I think so. Not all of the exams are back though. But I'm glad to say she's not pregnant. That's one relief at least."_

"Not much of one and you know it. The tests aren't as sensitive with vampire-human pregnancies. She could still be and we wouldn't even know it."

"_I had to do a C-T Scan and other exams and didn't see anything that would indicate that and I did check her womb. But you're right of course those pregnancies tend to be tricky. And besides, with so much venom and it leaking in her body, she doesn't need him around to get pregnant. The venom can take care of it all by itself. And if she was sleeping with the boy there's a chance his semen could have been stored as well for later use since it has venom in it. We still don't know much about how this kind of thing works."_

"Yeah, there hasn't been much chance to study them since many of the pregnancies we've seen have blind sighted us in the delivery room and those that we have seen their progression have all been very different from one another."

"_I still think we can be cautiously optimistic about her not being pregnant. However, I wanna discuss something with you. I think we can't give him six months to come back. With so much venom in her body and her changes she needs him. I think this was started by her heartbreak."_ There was a long pause. Then he sighed. _"I took a look at her heart while I was at it. It's not looking well."_

"Broken Heart Syndrome?"

"_Vampire style. There's actually a fissure in her heart in between the right and left hemispheres. She also has a murmur I hadn't heard before. I don't think it can withstand any more separation from him. That's the only thing that will heal her. I wanna send some scouts out to see if they can find him and I wanna question her on all that happened. I think, no scratch that, I'm __**sure**__ she's been holding out on us, even with all she has shared. But apart from that I worry about the effect this is having on her. I think the slow death due to separation may be faster with our little Romeo and Juliet and if it is… Well I never did like the ending of that play."_

"No one does, less when it's in real life. I say go ahead and send out scouts to see what they can find. The sooner he returns to her the better. And maybe we can knock some sense into that boy, though from Bella's descriptions of him, that may be impossible. Besides, if she's this bad, then I have to wonder how bad off **he** is. You know how the bond between them works as well as I do. It's our bond after all."

"_I know, I know. He's probably just as bad if not worse than her. And that is probably playing a part in both of their symptoms since their pain and injuries can be shared through the bond straining them both."_ He sighed again. _"You know I don't like anyone leaving Berk, especially since the Volturi is still hunting our descendants to attain a dragon master, but we have no choice. She may still have months or she could be dead tomorrow, we just can't know but this separation may very well kill her."_

"How long do we have, do you think?"

He sighed. _"Not long at all. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone being able to go much more than a year without their thrice bonded mate. And if the pain doesn't kill them, it drives them insane."_

"We've separated longer than that. Three hundred year ago we separated for nearly a decade."

"_But we separated agreeably and remained in contact with each other, plus we knew where the other was and could go see the other whenever we pleased. Also, we're both vampires, while she is still human. That means she can't withstand as much as he can and that plays a factor. And besides you remember how those 9 years were for us. It killed us both to separate but we had no choice with Aro hunting us and all and that certainly was no picnic. We wouldn't have done it otherwise. But that is not their case. He left her, broke her heart and lied to her. He denied their bond, fought it at every turn instead of embracing it as she had. That certainly changes things a lot."_

I sighed. He was right of course. "Do you know any more? How far into the change is she?"

"_Not all the tests have come back. I'll let you know when you get here. They should be in by then." _

We rang off as Charlie walked into the bridge.I sighed. "She pulled through surgery. It was appendicitis as we though. She'll be alright in a few days. Hiccup just radioed to let me know. He did the surgery himself."

I saw the relief in his eyes. "That's good. But I'm curious. I didn't know he was a surgeon. I thought he was an inventor and the Chief of the village."

I smiled. "We wear many hats in Berk. I'm a nurse but I'm also a teacher at the Academy and yes Hiccup is an inventor as well as being chief and is also a very skilled surgeon and is also a teacher at the academy. We do what needs to be done. It's the way of our people, Charlie, and you would do well to remember it. There's other doctors and nurses, we aren't always needed. We can do other jobs if we so choose." He nodded. I told him we would be on the island in about 20 minutes. He nodded and headed to his room to gather his things. He would not go near Bella's room with the dragons in there.

As we pulled into the dock and the boat was tied off we were met by my husband. "She's alright," he told Charlie as he disembarked. "The hospital's up the street from the docks at the plaza. You remember the way right? We'll meet you there, we've got to get Bella's pets off the boat and to the clinic. She's still unconscious and will be for some time still but she's fine." Charlie nodded and walked away. He already knew we'd get their bags to where they were staying, though Bella would be staying with me and my husband whether he liked it or not.

**Hiccup POV**

Getting Fury and Nightshade off the boat was an even greater production than getting them into the boat without their trainer, but we managed it. They were confused as to where Bella was and we had no choice but to explain that she was sick but we were taking care of her. Fury sure as hell didn't like that. His name certainly fit with his temper and he was extremely protective of Bella, a good thing in my book since he would keep her safe with his life. Getting them to the clinic was that much harder. All they wanted was to be with Bella, but they needed medical care, they were far too injured and sick to do anything else. Bella would want it to be that way and would be with them as soon as she was okay. Once the doctors had them on hand, and we had sedated them so that they could be examined and treated properly we headed back to the hospital which was down the street from the clinic. Bella's tests were indeed all back by the time we got there so while Charlie sat beside Bella, Astrid and I headed to my office shutting the door behind us and locking it just in case Charlie decided to come looking for us. Bella's file was on my desk. I picked it up as I sat down in my chair and Astrid sat in front of me and looked through it then handed it to her and placed my head in my hands. "It's as bad as I thought," I told her.

She read through the results and sighed. "How long does she have?"

I shook my head. "A year at most I'd say. She's only 10 percent and is going about it slowly with no new infusions."

"Do you think we should speed it up? You pulled more than enough out of her to finish it now, even without him."

"That's up to her. When she wakes up we'll discuss it with her. I would caution her that it would be better to wait a short while. Get her affairs in order so that she can remain with us for a short time so we can train her. On the upside, this means that we may be able to start training her on using her powers much easier than if she were fully human. If and when she leaves us, she'll be that much safer that way."

"Depending on what her power actually is. What if it's something that is not going to keep her safe?"

"I have a pretty good idea that she's a shield. You know I can vaguely sense the powers of vampires and humans, like Aro's pet Eleazar, only not as precise. What's unusual about her is that she radiates very strongly. I can read her completely. I feel she's a shield and a very powerful one at that. But I also feel something else from her, and that's what I really want to figure out."

"What is it?"

"I feel like her shield hides something, another power maybe. You know that some of our descendants have had more than one power. It's possible that she does to."

"Only the ones that are direct descendants and their blood has not been very diluted with bloodlines from outside Berk."

I nodded. "As does Bella. She's a direct descendant with little dilution in the blood of Berk. I looked at the family tree last night when I noticed what was going on with her. She'd started radiating harder the closer we got to Berk. You know we've taken great pains to maintain the records up-to-date especially with the bloodlines outside of the island. I traced Bella's branch of the tree all the way back to us. While there has been some dilution, for example Bella's mother is not of the bloodline and neither was her grandfather. Her ancestry traces all the way back to us with little to no deviation from the bloodlines of the island. Bella's a pure blood. And what's more she's the last direct descendant of Evangeline and one of Mirana's direct descendants as well. That much purity in her bloodline means that she would be quite powerful. You know that our descendants have only gotten stronger with their powers as the generations have passed. We're both gifted and each successive child of our blood, particularly those that are pure bloods have become stronger and stronger. Each successive gift stronger than the last, even if it's the same as the gift of a previous child."

She nodded. "If that's the case, being a child of two bloodlines she's unusually pure and may be strong. But it still remains to be seen."

I nodded. "We need to discuss all of this with her. We'll send Charlie to stay at Mildew's old house. He won't be able to stand staying in town with all the dragons walking around. You know that's what happened last time he was here. And we'll ask Bella to stay with us so she can be closer to her pets and also so we can train her. We'll be able to discuss things with her easier that way."

She nodded. "What about the kids?"

I looked at her confused. "What kids?"

"Cameron and his siblings. We agreed to take care of them for a month after we returned remember?"

I had to slap myself on the forehead. I'd forgotten. "I forgot all about that. But I don't think it'll be a problem. Cameron and his siblings pretty much take care of themselves. All they really need is a place to stay since the orphanage burned down a few months ago. We really need to check and see how the rebuilding project is going." She nodded. "She should be awake right now. We'll speak with her now and explain and since Bella's 18 we can kick Charlie out of the room if she wants him to leave."

"Why do I have the feeling that our problems with Charlie have just begun?" she wondered with a sigh. I nodded. I felt the same way.

**Bella POV**

I woke up in confusion and my head felt like it was wrapped in cotton wool. I was unsure of where I was but then the memory of what happened came back to me. The pain was excruciating, but now I felt fine. Now I was confused. I remembered what I overheard them say but I had no explanation for it. I looked around the room as a loud snore caught my attention. Charlie sat fast asleep on the comfortably padded chair beside my bed. _So nice to know how concerned he was, _I thought snidely, then shook my head. _I'm being too hard on him. Who knows how long he's been sitting there._ I tried not to move but I coughing fit hit me. Charlie snapped awake at the noise.

"Bella?" he said turning to me. He stood up and grabbed the cup of ice water on the tray by the bed then helped me drink some. When I could speak I nodded at him. "You scared me, kid," he told me.

I nodded. "I scared myself," I told him.

"Hiccup said you'd be alright now, though. You had appendicitis but he operated on you and you'll be back on your feet in a few days." I nodded. So that was the public story they fed him. Fitting. Charlie was going to say something else, but before he could the door opend and in walked Hiccup and Astrid.

"Hello Bella. How are you feeling?" Astrid asked walking up to the bed.

"Good, a bit groggy though."

"It's the sedatives. They'll wear off in a few hours," Hiccup told me. "Bella, can we talk to you for a minute?"

"Sure." Charlie staid put in his chair.

"Alone, Charlie."

"No, whatever you have to say to my daughter. I have a right to hear."

Hiccup sighed. "She's 18. Legally and adult. So unless she wants you to stay…"

"And I don't," I said.

"Then you have to leave." Charlie glared but stood and walked out the door, closing it behind him. "Bella, we need to talk about some things…" Astrid grabbed his arm and held her finger to her lips. She walked to the door and opened it and Charlie fell into the room.

I rolled my eyes. "Honestly Charlie. You're not a child. Go to the waiting room and wait. And don't try to listen behind the door again. You should be ashamed of yourself. A grown man skulking behind doors like a child." Charlie looked embarrassed and left. "So, what happened?" I asked tuning to my ancestors as soon as the door was closed behind Charlie.

Hiccup sighed. "I know you heard me say Code Black Heart, correct?"

I nodded. "Yeah whatever is that?"

Astrid and Hiccup sat on either side of the bed. "Code Black Heart, Bella, is the term we use to describe a person, be they man or woman, human or vampire, that's suffering the effects of a neglected trice pair bond."

"Okay, I got absolutely none of that."

He sighed. "Okay, let's start with something simpler. How much did the Cullens tell you about vampires? Did they explain about the bonds between vampire soul mates or anything about their physiology?"

"Not really. Ed—Edward was reluctant to speak about anything like that. He did explain that my blood called to him like no other and Alice told me the little she knew about the transformation, which wasn't much since she has no recollection of her transformation or anything about being human at all. She only recalls the moment that she woke up, but that doesn't surprise me. From what James told me about what she knew of her, she was kept in an insane asylum for most likely most of her life and who knows what she endured there. Her mind was probably protecting itself."

"Anything else?" Astrid asked. I shook my head. "Let's start with what you do know. Now you said you friend Alice remembers nothing of being human. There are several reasons for that. First being your theory, which is pretty correct. Her mind would have protected itself so she could survive. The second could be that she received a terrible blow to the head that caused brain damage or a hemorrhage. That would have also contributed and it could have happened easily since James had been hunting her from what you told us. He may even have struck the blow himself in revenge for her escape. What do you know of the transformation?"

"When you're bitten, the venom enters your bloodstream. It doesn't kill you. It's meant to be incapacitating. If the vampire stops feeding at the bite then the venom spreads and begins the slow change. You burn in the fires of hell for 3 days before your heart stops and you become a vampire. Newborns are blood thirsty, wild and out of control. Over time they can learn to prioritize and none of the other desires ever really go away but their main personality trait is that their thirsty. That's all I know."

They sighed. "They probably know more, but not much more than that. Clearly we do know much more," Hiccup sighed. "We'll start with the transformation. Yes what you do know is correct. However, what they themselves though know is how to truly handle the transformation and the resulting newborn. You see Bella. The transformation is excruciating, as you said it's like being burned in the fires of hell and there is nothing, no medication natural or otherwise, that can lessen that pain. But there are ways of controlling it. The cold of our bodies helps with the fire, the close contact of a body and speaking to the neophyte helps them ground themselves and also focus on something other than the agony. What you family described was the cruel version of the transformation adopted and sponsored by the Volturi. It wasn't the way of old unless the neophyte was abandoned by the creator or the creator was sanguine, like Aro. Believe me I know exactly what the Cullens went through because I went through it myself. Neither Aro nor any of his men cared a whit about the newborns they crated, we were just tools, nothing more, and I know that had he known about this, your Carlisle would have used this method to help the neophytes he created. You can give them morphine in extremely high dosages, but all that does is keep them quiet, nothing more. Now the normal method of transformation is through a bite, however, there are other methods and this is where what happened with you started to come in. There's another slower version of the transformation that occurs in the exchange of saliva through deep kissing, even sex to an extent. In small dosages, like those taken during kissing, the human body actually stores it instead of discarding it. It's stored in either the appendix or the spleen becoming a venom bladder. Why the body stores it, instead of discarding it, we don't know. Now when there is enough stored, especially with um, continued infusions, the venom bladder becomes overfilled. That's part of what happened with you.

"I had noticed that your abdomen is distended this morning and that told me one of two things, either you're pregnant or we had a full venom bladder that was about to explode. The pain in your abdomen was from an overfilled venom bladder. I took 5 full 60cc needles out of yours because your bladder was in danger of rupturing. A few more hours, if that, and it would have, and that amount of venom introduced so quickly into your system would not have started the transformation, it would have been such a shock to your system that it would have killed you before the transformation could even think about starting."

"Is that what Code Black Heart means?" I wondered.

They shook their heads. "No Bella Code Black Heart is another problem entirely, we'll explain that in a minute. Now We know you still have a full bladder, we can't drain it completely because that too will be fatal. You see, the venom begins the transformation by healing and/ or correcting any physical flaws, injures, whether new or old, and any ailments the person has. In fact we use this to treat people medically. You know that when you were a baby you had a rare form of leukemia, one that was incurable, but we cured you. That's how we did it. Using extremely small amounts of our venom over a period of time we killed the cancer and saved you, the same principal as chemotherapy but not as terrible. Now the second stage is that the venom supplants the immune system. With the slow, kinder transformation, the venom begins by enhancing the immune system, but it will eventually replace it."

"So what you're saying is that I have no immune system without the venom?" I wondered.

Astrid answered. "You're not quite that far yet. You're only at 10% transformation. What that means is that the venom is slowly supplanting your immune system along with healing your body and preparing it for the latter stages of the transformation. But if we attempt to remove the venom, it would be fatal because it would leave you with no immune system since your body is reliant on the venom for that now and is slowly shutting down the production of immune cells which in turn allows the venom to take over. And your body would no longer recover from that. In essence like you had leukemia again only worse."

I shook my head. So whether he knew or not, whether he liked it or not he gave me exactly as I wanted. "How long do I have?"

"Well, that's up to you, actually," Hiccup told me. "When you're ready, we could use the venom we pulled out of you, which we saved since it belongs to you. Inject it straight into your heart to begin the transformation immediately. Doing it that way would make it so the transformation would take about a day and a half, two at most, but it would be painful. Or you could allow your body to change slowly, which is a kinder, less painful transformation until the later stages. Those would feel like you're burning alive until each is over. Our advice, however, is that you take some time, get your affairs back in Forks done so that you can remain here with us and we can train you properly, unless something happens that requires an immediate transformation. But you don't have to decide now. You have plenty of time and we advise you to think things over. But there's no turning back the clock. Sometime by the end of the year, possibly sooner, you'll be a vampire."

I nodded. "Since it's what I wanted. I guess it doesn't matter." _And then maybe he'll… no don't think like that Bella. You wanted this to be with him but now he isn't here. But you do have people who love you who you want to stay with forever. They're sitting right in front of you,_ I thought to myself. "But I'll take your advice. It would be better to at least get away from Charlie and complete the things I still have left before turning."

They nodded and I could see that this was the decision they hoped I would make. "You'll have to monitor yourself for several things. Some neophytes in your position have been known to produce venom in their bladders entirely on their own without the contribution of the vampire donor, though its uncommon, it happens. If that happens then what happened today can happen again. We'll give you a list of the signs and symptoms to watch out for later. If you feel them or notice anything strange you need to let us know right away. Better to be wrong than risk it. The venom also has another consequence you need to watch out for. You see, vampires males are highly fertile, so long as their partner is human or mostly human. It's our females that are sterile until the breeding season and even then, most won't conceive. It's the reason that I asked you earlier if there's a chance you could be pregnant. Even without sex, you could become pregnant because of the venom."

"How?"

"Well, the venom is leaking into your body, that's what's making you transform slowly. We're not sure why the venom leaks. But it does. When it does it has to go somewhere. Your blood won't accept it because it is poisonous to you though it still enters and travels thought your body, changing you slowly. But it also goes to the womb. When it goes to the womb it has two effects; first it stimulates you to produce more eggs, average being 8 to 10 eggs though most if not all, particularly if it's not your normal ovulating time, are not viable; and second it fertilizes the eggs. They may not take, and if they do, you're as likely to miscarry as you've always been. But still about 20% of the time, you could end up pregnant. If you had sex, it's possible the sperm was stored as well and that makes it that much more likely to happen, but it would happen anyway. And no other man will be able to impregnate you. You could do it, but the venom would either destroy the semen or if an egg is fertilized, it may not take or if it does the venom will turn the child in utero, in essence making the child a half vampire just like if you had conceived it with him. So you would also need to monitor yourself for signs of pregnancy, though with hybrid pregnancies, there is a good chance you'll have no signs until you deliver. We've seen it happen before. Hybrid pregnancies can last anywhere between 1 ½ months to 4 months, but not much more than that. The longest we've seen was 5 months. We'll give you the information for that later, but you'll need to be vigilant, the pregnancies are dangerous, especially when there are no signs. If you deliver outside of Berk you'll need to be that much more careful since you'll be in danger, not only from the complications but also because of being with humans that don't know and being under the eye of the Volturi."

Now that made me sad. I could have Edward's baby, but he wasn't here and he might not believe me… "Am I…?"

He shook his head. "Right now, no. I check and there's no sign of a pregnancy, but that does not mean it can't happen later. Until your transformation is complete it could happen at any time." I nodded.

Astrid picked it up from there. "Now, you asked what Code Black Heart was. Well, Code Black Heart is a term we came up with to describe the symptoms of separation from a mate. You see, Bella, and this is something the Cullens never knew otherwise he would have never left, there are more than one level of soul bonding between vampire mates. And yes, before you even try to argue, you are in fact his true mate, and that my dear is what's killing you, and also him. There are 3 levers of bonding. The first is the normal soul bond everyone know about. You've seen it yourself, I believe, between Edward's siblings, and you've also seen the second one as well. This bond is called the twice bonded pair. It is forged when a vampire finds his mate in a human and turns them themselves, becoming not only their mate but also their sire with all the bonding that goes on both sides except one. The sire's DNA passes to the neophyte on transformation, in essence making the sire the neophyte's biological parent. But in a twice bonded pair, the two extra pairs of chromosomes that contain the larger majority of the vampire genome as well as the groups that make up the rest and fuse with the human DNA pass to the mate, but not the sires own genetic code. I guess Dr. Cullen never thought about doing a DNA study with himself and his creations did he? If he had he would have seen what we are telling you, that the vampires he created to be his children are genetically his children just as surely as if he had been the one to breed their mothers. Granted, not the entire human father's DNA is taken away in fact a paternity test would show that his creations have two fathers since his DNA merged with that of the human father. But with the mate his DNA would not be present anywhere in her. We believe that vampire males are highly fertile so that if they catch the breeding season with their mate they can increase the likelihood that she will conceive and bear a healthy baby. The venom acts the same way it would with an egg, it merges with the DNA present to make the newborn and if the creators DNA were present in his mate then it would defeat that purpose and make it impossible to conceive due to inbreeding."

I nodded. It actually made sense. "So when his venom turns me…"

"His vampirism passes to you, but not his DNA. If you were to conceive a child with someone else a paternity test would show that EDWARD and not this other man was the father. In the case of an embryo, the sire's DNA replaces completely the DNA of the human father. It's only after they are born that this is not the case, but in utero it is. But if you're wondering if you and Edward are twice bonded. The answer is no. You are in fact a thrice bonded pair. Thrice bonded pairs, like myself and Hiccup or Edward and you have three things that tie them together for all eternity. The first being that they are soul mates. The second is that the vampire is the human's creator. And the third… is that the human is the vampire's singer but he was strong enough to resist her. This bond is formed the first time that he set eyes on you and smelled your scent. Your first kiss with him merely sealed the deal." She sighed. "I know that you doubt his feelings, and after what he said to you, I can see why that is so. But **HE LIED TO YOU!** Bella he lied. Vampires cannot fall out of love, it is physically, psychologically and emotionally impossible for us to do that. We cannot live, truly cannot, without our mate, and for each level of bonding it makes it that much worse. A mated pair, if they lose their mate, won't want to continue unless something basically forces them to do so, but they can survive, they'll never be complete and they will never move on from that relationship but they can survive it. Twice bonded pairs are likely to die upon the death of the mate, and yes I did say die. There are precious few things that can kill us, but losing our mate in a twice or thrice bonded mating is one of them. It's possible they can survive, but they'll be hollowed out inside, like a living statue, and usually don't last long, especially after they descend into madness since they might either kill themselves or someone else might kill them. Then there's your bond with your mate. A thrice bonded pair is also called the Romeo and Juliet Bond. It's fatal unless they are together. This bond is extremely intense since one partner in it is mortal they are basically fitting all eternity into every single moment. Even after the transformation it remains that way. Were something to happen to either one of you, the other would die, instantly. No question about it. I saw it happen once 200 years ago. The Volturi had captured me and were holding me captive in Volterra. While there I was witness to the killing of a pair bonded like us. He was a vampire, she was human. The Volturi wanted him to join them since had a formidable gift for controlling fire. And they used the knowledge of his human mate against him.

"'_Join or die.'_ That was the crust of the decree, and Aro was aware of the pair bond between them. It was from him that we learned about this after all. He refused, so they took off his head, Aro's plan being to use the girl, keep her alive until she delivered their baby, perhaps use her to reproduce with since she proved capable of holding a vampire's seed. But it backfired. When his head left his shoulders, her heart stopped and her ears started to bleed and there was no reviving her. Her brain turned into mush and her heart exploded and the reason we know this is because Aro had her opened up to take her baby hoping it would survive so he could use it if it had a gift otherwise he would have killed the child as well. He made me open her up and take the baby. She survived, was barely old enough but she did and we have her with us now. Aro was curious about what happened. So he used a sword to cut her open and we saw what happened to her body on his death. A few hours later, Hiccup came to rescue me and we took their baby with us. So Bella it is completely impossible that he is not in love with you still. He can't not be in love with you and I'm not saying that because you are my daughter. I'm saying it because we know what bond you two share. You may think we are mistaken but we are not. The damage your heart currently has attests to that fact if nothing else. That's what code Black Heart means. Your heart and organs are suffering the effects of the separation, particularly since he rejected the bond between you. When he rushed you here we believed it was as much for the code as for the venom bladder and we were right. At every turn throughout your relationship with him, you embraced that bond but he fought it for reasons we don't understand and it was damaging both of you, but after he left, especially with how he did it, he set off a ticking time bomb that no one can predict. For all we know both of you could be dead tomorrow, or you could live for another year. Your transformation is a blessing in disguise since it's working to contain the damage, otherwise you would be further along than you are right now. But it will eventually kill you if he does not return. I know you won't like this, but it's time for tough love. We've sent scouts out to try to find him and drag him back to you kicking and screaming if they have to, or you both will die."

"But, but…"

"No Bella. She's right. We know what will happen to both of you. We can't not do something. He's unaware to what he's doing to himself and to you and it will cost you both dearly. Say you become pregnant, would you drag the baby with you if you happen to die? Say he decides to kill himself since this separation is also driving him insane slowly, he'll drag you with him. You also have to understand that in this you are actually stronger than him. You are made to withstand pain but he isn't. And he's the one that regected the bond. He;s suffering more than you are. He's very ill Bella. We can't know how bad off he is right now because we can't see him but he's definitely going through something horrible. Do you want him to suffer?"

I shook my head, "No. Of course not."

"Then he needs to be found. He needs to be with you and you need to be with him. It's as simple as that and to fight it will only put both of your lives at stake." I sighed. I knew I would not sway them in this. And then he would tell me to my face how much he hates me for all of this. Oh well, what could I do. They would not be swayed. We spoke for a few more minutes and they explained more about what was going on. They had found quite a bit of damage to my body because of the bond and how my body was slowly changing. I would have to stay in the hospital until the morning to allow for the sedatives to fully leave my body, but tomorrow I would go stay in their house. Charlie would stay in the house at the top of the mountain.

"Why is Charlie staying so far away?" I wondered.

Hiccup sighed. "He asked to stay there. There are no neighbors so few if any dragons go by that way. It's all the way on the other side of the island, a 4 hour walk from here without a dragon and there are no cars on this island, the smell of exhaust fumes is bad for the dragons and besides they wouldn't survive the winters here and would be useless all but part of the year."

Charlie came in then. I sighed. I didn't need this right now. "Well when is she coming out of the hospital?"

Hiccup and Astrid sighed. "Tomorrow morning," Hiccup answered.

"Good, then we can finally go to our place here."

"I'm not staying there Charlie. I don't want to stay so far away from Fury and Nightshade," I told him. "And I certainly don't want to have to walk 4 hours just to go to town since you don't like dragons."

"And besides, she needs to stay near the hospital. You do realize she just went through surgery right Charlie. She has to remain close to the hospital just in case anything happens."

"I won't allow it. She's staying with me."

I glared at him. "How many times do I have to remind you that I am 18 years old, legally an adult and can do as I please. I will not stay so far away from town and that's that." Charlie tried to argue but Hiccup held his hand up.

"She's made her decision. You may be her father, but she's an adult and can more than decide for herself. You're ignoring her needs because you don't like what's going on, well though for you. She just went through surgery and if for no other reason she needs to remain in town near the hospital until she's fully recovered. She'll be staying with us, end of story Charlie," Hiccup said. Charlie continued to argue despite that but he could not change my mind not had any real argument. He left shortly after that. A wagon would take him to the house where he would stay. Dinner was served shortly after that and it was the first time ever that hospital food was delicious. I asked about that and they smiled and explained that they believed that food should be good; it helps people heal faster than the slob served at the hospitals back home. I had to agree and nearly inhaled my food, I was seriously starving. We spoke for a little while longer before they convinced me to go to sleep. Mamman stayed with me while Poppa went home to finish getting my room ready. I was so grateful to them. I honestly couldn't remember the last time someone had taken such care of me… Well someone other than Esme and Carlisle and the Cullens that is. The next morning, as promised, I was released from the hospital and went home with my ancestors.

* * *

_Author's note: I used A different lettering on my computer for the engraving, I'll post the picture of her book later on. Please review and let me know what you think. I'll have the next chapter up as soon as I can._

_SailorFoxFire_


	6. 5 The Barbarian Archipelago Pt 2: Life

_Hello Everyone. As promised here's the next chapter of the story. So sorry for the prolonged wait but as I had posted in the author's note I had serious problems with posting. It has taken me so long, 10 times longer than I thought it would and for those that didn't read my author's note before I deleted it to replace it with the chapter, I've had many problems with all three stories I'm currently working on. Unfortunately my computer died on me and my pendrive, where all the stories were written, broke so I lost all of my information and it couldn't be retrieved. I got a new laptop since my other was still in warranty but most of the memory of the old one was corrupted so it was not retrievable, therefore I lost all I had written on the stories. I got lucky that I still had some online and one of my friends had the whole 'A Love Like No Other' but everything else was lost so I've had to rewrite the chapter all over again. So here are, at long last the next installment of the stories. And I hope to have more done soon but the stories are evolving as I write them. Please remember that my poll for the reunion of Bella and Edward in Heart By Heart is still open and I really would like to know opinions. It'll close soon so please let me know what you think._

_See you all soon._

_Sailor FoxFire_

* * *

**5\. The Barbarian Archipelago Pt. 2: Life on Berk**

**Bella POV**

My days on the island were some of the more amazing I had ever had. It was so much fun and I was learning so much as well. True to their word as soon as I was released from the hospital, I went to stay in my ancestors' house. They had told me that some orphans were staying there as well because the orphanage had burned down a few weeks ago, and I made it a point to help out with them. As soon as I got to their house, I had to do a double take. It was beautiful. The roof was horseshoe-shaped and there were elaborate carvings of dragons as part of the façade. Hiccup explained that it was the architecture or the island. The house had a horseshoe-shaped roof to keep the snow off of it. I asked why not try using the more modern designs that I was used to seeing, but he explained that the houses would not survive the harsh winters. The traditional design that they used was geared to survive the extreme winters of the area. "But it looks so small? And quaint, like it would barely fit us three inside," I kept wondering.

Hiccup laughed. "Looks can be deceiving. The house I had lived in as a boy looked no bigger than one room but it was actually 4 bedrooms and a large open living room, dining room and kitchen. The outer architecture makes it look small, but it only looks that way. I built this one when Astrid and I married. And added on to it when we had Evangeline. It's 9 bedrooms, three floors. Because it's built with solid wood and the design of it, it masks itself as smaller than it actually is. Which once upon a time was a defense mechanism. Before there were other tribes here that we battled with. We lived in peace for the most part and few would dare battle dragons but we were always on the lookout and the design helped to hide which houses contained whom or how many people as well as giving us places to hide women, children and elderly that could not fight that are not visible. Of course after we had the dragons it became a moot point, but we continued as we were just in case, it worked well so why change it. Come on, sweetie."

I followed him into the house. It was large, much larger than I had thought it was. It was a complete open floor plan. I could see all the way into the surprisingly modern kitchen. Astrid laughed as she took my coat. "Yes Bella, we have a modern kitchen. We upgraded the house as more technology becomes available. I'm a lousy cook, but Hiccup is a great cook so that's his domain, though I wouldn't have admitted how bad a cook I am in my youth."

Hiccup laughed. "Remember the Yaknog you made for Snoggletog? What was in it anyway? I always meant to ask."

"Yaknog?"

"Astrid's take on eggnog, I think. It was years ago. During Snoggletog, after the war with the dragons had ended. Our dragons had left, and we later found out it was to lay their eggs. Astrid and our friends decided to create new holiday traditions while I worked on my present for Toothless, a new tail that he could control on his own, thus giving him his freedom back. Yaknog was the beverage Astrid came up with."

Astrid laughed. "Honestly I can't quite remember anymore, though I do remember it having eggs and edible seaweed." I looked at her like she was crazy.

"I tried some by mistake," Hiccup told me. "Never again. It tasted like yak vomit, what I imagine that would taste."

We sat on the large couch, Astrid settling a big fluffy pillow behind my back. "Whatever gave you the idea to mix that up?"

"No idea. I thought it would taste good, boy was I wrong. I tried some later too. Never again, though. But the worst part of that was when we found Meatlug's eggs and I got the **brilliant** idea to give them to our people since they were missing their dragons. At the time we didn't know that dragon eggs explode." Astrid shook her head. "It destroyed the entire village. But Hiccup saved the day by bringing our dragons and their babies back."

"Would my dragons have tails they can control?" I wondered.

Hiccup nodded. "It's practical to have both options particularly since they will leave with you. They might need to hunt or even escape at a time when you're not able to go so that's a good option to have. Also it would make it easier for you given that you can't ride both at the same time.

"How are they really?" I wondered.

They sighed. "About as good as we expected. Their tails are very infected. But they are stable. Their weight is of concern though. They are almost 1,000 pounds underweight, which for their size, is dangerously thin. Nightshade is supposed to weigh 2,500 pounds, and Fury is supposed to be 200-300 pounds bigger than her so they are dangerously thin. They'll stay at the clinic until the infection's under control."

"When can I see them?"

"How about after lunch? You're still recovering from surgery so why don't you take a nap and after lunch we'll take you to the clinic to see them."

I nodded, and Astrid helped me up and took me upstairs. I got the room at the top of the stairs second door to the right. "This is your room. It has its own bathroom which is through the left door, the right is the walk-in closet, though it has a door joining it to the bathroom," Astrid explained as she helped me to the bed, I was still quite sore from surgery. "We already brought in all your clothes and there's also others in there for you including your Dragon Academy uniform and glide suit."

"Uniform?"

She nodded. "Years ago, when clothing styles changed to those that might not easily survive riding on the back of a dragon, we chose a uniform for the academy." She went to the closet and pulled it out along with the glide suit and showed it to me. "The uniform consists of a leather and fur jacket made to withstand the temperatures of the upper atmosphere. Since your dragons are Night Furies it has a Night Fury sown onto it. The shirt is made of thick cotton and there are two sets of bottoms since we weren't sure what you'd prefer to wear. Girls have a choice of a skirt and leather leggings or wearing thick pants similar to the boys. My advice is to go with the leggings and skirt. Reason being that the pants tend to chaff when you ride for long periods of time. But both are designed to keep your legs warm and be easy to move in," she explained as she showed me each piece.

"If the pants chaff, I think I'll go with the skirt and leggings. I've had clothes that did that before and it really hurt."

She nodded as she grabbed the glide suit. "You can buy clothes that you can ride in apart from the uniform in the marketplace. Even other styles of glide suit. This one is the standard female glide suit. Admittedly the design has been changed since Hiccup first created it." It looked like a cat woman costume to me, only in black and red.

"It looks like a cat woman costume," I mentioned.

She nodded. "Over the years we found that a more streamline design aids with control in flight and also the distance and maneuvering. The first one Hiccup designed was pretty bulky and not very easy to maneuver in; in fact he pretty much could only glide in a straight line, whereas with this design you can fully control the flight. Boy suits tend to look like a superman suit. The wings are kept rolled up tight to the side for easy movement while on the ground and release by opening the clips. In an emergency, say if you fall of your dragon, by snapping your arms up over your head the snaps open up and release the wings. We'll teach you how to work with it."

"But won't I get cold in it, it's so thin," I wondered.

She smiled, "Looks can be deceiving. It's designed to hold in your body heat, like a dive suit. In fact, we use the same material design to make deep cold diving suits. It's covered in dragon scales to make it more streamline and also help keep you warmer. You can stand in this out in a blizzard and it would feel like you're wrapped up in a warm cocoon. The gloves are made the same way so your fingers and hands will be warm as well. The booths that go with it are made of a thicker material but still work perfectly fine though you could leave them off since they bottom part of the suit has enclosed feet to keep you warm. In fact you could wear this suit to go diving with your dragons and still be warm, not deep diving though, for that you'd need especial gear but you could dive 50 feet in the ocean and still be completely warm. There are suits that aren't as warm which would be good for when you leave, but you'd have to have them specially designed for you."

"Are the scales Night Fury scales?" I wondered since they were black.

She nodded. "Dragons shed scales often, like dogs shed hair. We collect them and use them. Years ago we found out they have a great may uses. Some can be sharpened to make arrow heads, other can be uses as cutting implements, and many others can be used for other things. Water dragons like the Scauldron shed scales that we collect to line the outside of diving suits since their scales are water repellant. Night Furies shed scales that can be sharpened but also are very streamline, perfect for glide suits. Everyone uses the scales of their dragons to interweave them into their glide suits. Yours will be the only purely black glide suit unless you want to add more scales of different colors. Night Furies are pure black so they would be from other dragons." I shook my head I liked it as it was.

It was then I realized something. "Mamman, what's the currency here? Charlie didn't give me any."

She smiled. "We don't use paper money; we use gold, silver or copper and other metals to buy things. We also trade for goods and services, like in the old days. And don't worry, Charlie brought some with him, and also while we were at the cave, I found a deposit of it which we took as well for your use. It's actually a better idea to keep money in metal form rather than paper or even bonds. For one thing, it's untraceable, also it increases in value so a small amount could be worth as much as 5 times more in a few years, which is always a good investment in the outside. It's all in the safe for when you need it, just let me know and I'll open it for you. I could give you the code, but it's worthless since the door is too heavy for you to be able to open on your own." I nodded. "Go ahead and take a nap, I'll wake you for lunch and then we can go see Fury and Nightshade." I nodded as she stood and put the clothes away in my closet. I settled into the bed and quickly went to sleep, I was still exhausted.

True to her word Mamman woke me up just after noon for lunch. We had a lovely fish stew with fresh baked bread. After lunch we left the house to go to the market. "Why do we need to go to the market right now? I thought we were going to see Fury and Nightshade?" I wondered as I followed my ancestors through town and into the market. It was a quaint open air market, like those you saw in medieval movies where all manner of things were displayed to be sold. Some had full shops set up instead of stalls including a tailor, a shoe maker and a butcher.

Hiccup smiled. "We need to pick up a few things for them. Trainers are expected to bring the things their dragon's need to the clinic along with their food. It's part of their care and also makes them feel more comfortable when they are away from their trainers."

I nodded in understanding. "We'll just be picking up a few things they need. And some food too. It might be wise to leave them with something that has your scent on it too so I brought one of your blankets from the ship as well. The scent of their trainer is comforting because they are in a strange place with strange people pocking and prodding them and separated from you so having something to help connect them to you will help calm them." She grinned. "They sure are a handful. It was a production getting them off the ship and to the clinic, especially since we had to tell them you were sick. Even with our strength we had a hard time dragging those two to the clinic when all they wanted was to be with you at the hospital. While you were asleep their doctor called to let us know what was going on with them. They're doing much better, no doubt about it, but they don't have much of an appetite. My guess is that they just want you."

"Like little kids with their mommy?" I wondered.

She nodded. "Not that surprising. Most dragons tend to be very attached to their master. I think it has more to do with the fact that they know something's wrong with you. They're worried and won't really calm down until they know you're okay. Toothless was the same way when Hiccup was taken by Aro. I had a really hard time convincing him to rest or eat, even drink water. All he wanted was to find Hiccup and nothing would stop him. I did too of course and I was just as bad, but I realized that if I didn't take a few minutes to take care of my own needs, I'd be of no use to my husband who needed help. They'll calm down once they see you."

"How are they really?" I asked as we stopped at the fish stand to pick up some food for them. They taught me what to choose for them to eat. Dragons ate a diet of mostly fish though they also ate beef and chicken, but in that case it was better cooked, since raw chicken could make them sick as much as they made me and other humans sick. We filled 2 large baskets with mostly salmon, halibut and herring, fish with high fat content since they were very underweight, and also plenty of trout.

Hiccup sighed. "About as well as we had expected. The doctor said that the infection's pretty bad, though Nightshade has it worse than Fury. It's possible she may lose the other tail wing and if she does… it might be kinder to put her to sleep. We really don't want to, she's precious. But if she loses the other wing she'll never be able to fly again. I can make her and Fury a replacement wing but if she loses the other natural one then she may never fly again. I tried with a Sand Wraith that lost both tail wings. They're a close cousin of the Night Fury, even look somewhat similar and have the same tail structure. The prosthesis didn't work, no matter what I did, he could never fly again and became so depressed we had to put him to sleep; it was the only kind thing to do. Granted she has a mate, and that might keep her from becoming so depressed, but, well right now we'll do all we can and hope for the best, but you need to be prepared for the worst case scenario."

I sighed. I so didn't want that. I resolved to do all that I could to help both of them get better again. We went around to different booths. Including a granite cutter. I looked at Astrid. "It's for them to sleep on. Granite holds in heat longest so they can keep warm at night. This is for the house though. Before we used to put them in just a slab of granite and some still do though we've added some padding to make it a little more comfortable. It's fireproof so they can still use their fire to heat their bed. This one we ordered is fitted so that both can lay together. It'll be more comfortable for them that way." I nodded. Next we went to the herbal store and picked up dragon nip and other herbs. "The herbs are for making medicines or treating injuries in them and you. We're helping you build up your first aid kit which you'll also be needing for your herbal class in the academy."

"Hey, while we're here. We should pick up the rest of her school supplies," Hiccup mentioned.

"School supplies?" I wondered.

"Well you are in the dragon academy now. For the most part you'll be learning with us but there are some classes you'll be taking at the actual academy and you'll need the supplies for them. Herbal Sciences is covered in the herbs we've gotten, you can get more as you need them. But we'd still have to cover Flight and Gliding classes, Dragon Racing 101 and Wilderness Survival."

"She already has her glide suit and the academy uniform, though she could get other clothes if she wants them. Will you make the saddles for her or will we order them?" Astrid asked as we passed the saddle shop.

"I'll make them. Christophe's a pretty decent saddle maker especially after 250 years working on them, but their tail prosthesis have to be specially fitted to them. Toothless has a slightly thicker tail than Fury so his design doesn't quite fit him or Nightshade. It's better if I make the whole harness, tail wing and saddles for them rather than just the prosthesis to better fit them to their needs. We'll have to wait until they've regained some weight though so that they can be better fitted."

"How long will that take?" I wondered.

He shrugged. "Not sure. But it will definitely be a few weeks at least. You'll be here until March so that's good. I doubt they'll be ready to leave with you when you're ready to go but they should be rideable before you do have to leave so you'll be able to get used to flying with their prosthesis. In the meantime you'll be practicing with Toothless."

"So I'll get to ride him?"

"Of course. How else will you learn to handle a dragon with special needs? I'll also be making the tail prosthesis that they can control on their own so that you can fly both of them. It's more practical since well there's one of you and two of them."

"What about the eggs?" I wondered.

That made him grin. "Happy and healthy all 19 of them. Seems like Nightshade just laid them maybe a few days before we found them so they're nowhere near ready to hatch yet. They've been taken to the hatchery," he said pointing at a large building just off the great hall. "We built it to hatch dragon eggs safely. It's actually mostly underground, a large cavern we dug out ourselves to create a great nest for the dragons here. It's also where, in times of war, we hid those that were unable to fight. There are lava pits to warm the place and also deep water pools to hatch the eggs. We placed them in the section belonging to us. There hasn't been a dragon there in several years. Since Stormfly passed on and of course Toothless doesn't have mate, but we still have our family nests there so Nightshade and Fury's eggs are perfectly safe. We're monitoring them every so often since we know nothing about how their eggs hatch or when, but they are perfect." I smiled and nodded. We continued walking around gathering everything we needed before taking it back to the house. Afterwards we gathered what we were taking to the clinic and then went to see Fury and Nightshade.

The clinic was actually in the main plaza, near the hospital. It was a modern-style building 16-stories tall. I was surprised to see it that way. The inside was very modern, looking very much like any doctor's office I'd ever seen. There were other people and their dragons there sitting in the waiting room. I guess this was the Berk version of a vet's office, not a cat or dog in sight though, which made me curious. "Aren't there other animals besides dragons here?" I wondered.

Hiccup smiled. "Believe it or not, you aren't the first one to ask. Yes people do keep cats, dogs and birds here as well as farm animals, but the vet clinic is separate from the dragon clinic. Its 3 streets to the west from here. It used to be that we didn't keep them here but over time we brought them back, however, we do tend to only buy animals that can adapt to here because of the harsh weather." I nodded as we stepped up to the counter.

"Hello Chief," the girl at the counter said. "How can I help you?"

"We're here to see the Night Furies we brought in." He placed a hand on my shoulder. "This is their trainer, Bella."

She smiled, "Lucky girl to find them. Here you go." She handed me a tablet. "You need to sign some of their paperwork, being their trainer while I make up your ID band." I nodded, though I was confused. I signed the digital tablet where it was indicated and handed it back. She reviewed the papers to make sure everything was alright. "Alright everything is in order. Can you give me your hand?" I nodded and extended my right hand. She clamped a pair of ID bracelet to my wrist. "These are the Trainer Bracelets for your dragons. They just show they belong with you. The ancestors already have some on since they care for them too." Hiccup lifted his sleeve, showing his ID's. "You'll need to wear them for as long as the dragons are admitted to the clinic." I nodded. "They've been moved to room 10-220, still part of the critical care unit, but the more stable area." I nodded.

My ancestors led me over to the elevators to the side of the office. Hiccup and Astrid grinned, "Bet you have questions," Hiccup said,

I nodded. Astrid laughed. "Okay, okay. It used to be that the clinic, back when we were young, was a normal shop added on to the house of our friend Gobber. But over time, as we had more and more dragons and more technology and knowledge available, we decided to improve the clinic. Over time, it evolved into this, which is almost as big as the hospital, though in the dragons' case that's necessary given that they're so big. Honestly even I think we cater to the dragons a little too much but I'm as guilty as everyone else and so is Hiccup. It's not really 16 floors, though it seems that way. Its 8 floors, what happened was that we joined two floors to make sure there was plenty of room for the larger breeds of dragons. Granted not all of them fit here and we work around that, but many do. The first two floors are the doctors' clinic where our dragon doctors care for regular needs: vaccines, general care, scratches, that sort of thing, things that don't need admittance or that need evaluation and regular check-ups. The other floors are for dragons that have to be admitted. Regular admittance are in floors 3-5 where we treat everything that comes in. Floors 6-8 are the critical care unit where the sickest dragons are kept, where floor 8 is for the absolutely sickest. Room 10-220 is on the east wing of floor 7. They're still critical but they're considered intermediate, too sick for regular care but still stable within their conditions, just not that stable."

"That's confusing," I mentioned.

They nodded. "A little," Hiccup admitted. "What it means is that the dragons are sick enough to need constant supervision and evaluation, but stable enough that they can be in a private room rather than the ward on the 8th floor. The dragons there are so ill, it's most likely that they'll pass on. Usually that's due to some kind of poisoning or septic shock. Few dragons end up there, though, we do the absolute best to keep that from happening." He sighed. "Especially after we established eutenacia protocols as the last resort. In fact the drugs for that are kept up there, except for the emergency stash in the emergency room."

"Why did you establish that protocol if you hate it so much?" I was curious about it though I feared it for my pets, especially Nightshade.

He sighed. "Dragons are rare, no doubt about it. And we try our absolute hardest to make them well again. Sometimes though there's nothing we can do for them. To let them suffer is cruel, and can also be very dangerous. Dragons in pain can be very volatile and unpredictable. For the safety of the people and also for the sake of the dragon it is best to let them go so they don't suffer anymore or cause harm to others." I sighed and nodded, but I would work my hardest to get Fury and Nightshade through this._ They __**would **__be okay,_ I swore to myself.

The elevator doors opened onto the 7th floor and I followed my ancestors to the room where my dragons were staying. Honestly it looked just like any hospital, albeit with more decoration and better color choices on the walls, but still just as sterile as any hospital. The doors were oversized, which I imagined was for the benefit of the extremely large patients. Clearly people here loved dragons, back home, the vet offices looked nothing like this, and the animals were kept in cages instead of having their own rooms like in the people hospital. "I'm curious about something," I mentioned as we walked down the hall.

"Yes dear?" Astrid asked

"Why not put the dragons up like they do at all the vet clinics?"

Hiccup smiled. "We do, sort of. Few cages would hold them for one thing, and they would have to be exceedingly large to do so. A room with closed doors and view windows works the same way. Also we found that most dragons tend to get really edgy when kept in cages so we only really use that on the 8th floor ward since the cage restricts their movements so they don't hurt themselves. In this floor they get room-like cages where they have some space to move around if they are able. And then there's the fact that we need room for equipment and for people to work with them and no cage will allow that. Besides most of us really hate seeing them caged like that. And many dragons become depressed when they are caged for prolonged periods. This way it doesn't feel like a cage while still confining them as they heal."

I nodded it did make sense, but Mamman was right, they did cater to the dragons a lot. And I was gonna be as guilty as any of them. Hiccup pointed to the door marked 10-220. "That's the one. You need to check in with the nurse and doctor in charge of them first." I nodded and we walked over to the nurse's desk. "Anna?" Hiccup asked.

A woman with long red hair and bright yellow eyes looked up at him. She was vampire to be sure, and for a moment reminded me of Victoria, though the resemblance stopped at her hair. She appeared to be in her mid-20's and had the alabaster porcelain skin of all vampires but her features were rather on the kittenish side which I thought maybe made her look younger. She smiled at Hiccup. "Ancestor, how can I help you?" Her voice was low and velvety, it kind of reminded me of a singer I'd heard before but couldn't place her.

Astrid pointed at me. "We brought the trainer for the two Night Furies," she explained.

Anna grinned at me. "Lucky girl, to have found them," she said. She picked up the chart beside her as well as a tablet. "Just sign here," she said indicating the tablet, and I did. "The doctor stepped out to deal with an emergency, but he just examined them. They haven't got much of an appetite, but we'll see how they react with their trainer here now. Still the infection on the male's tale is getting better, slowly, but it looks better. I changed his bandages earlier and his tail is healing quite well. The female is still in bad shape but she has gotten a bit better since her last exam. The doctor wanted to talk to you and the ancestors about maybe doing some debriding on the wound. He thinks cleaning some of the dead tissue off would help her start healing. They're on antibiotic drips so we're trying to restrict their movements, not that they've had much energy or will to get up and move around. That's actually our main concern right now. They're getting depressed and we're not sure if it's because they miss their trainer or because they feel too confined since they just came from the wild."

We nodded. I had a feeling that it was because they were missing me as much as being in a strange place. "Probably a little of both," Hiccup echoed my thoughts.

"Anything else?" Astrid asked. "Have they eaten yet?"

She nodded. "They did eat some of their breakfast, but left most of it and didn't want their lunch. Since we knew you were coming up to see them we kept their lunches up here to try and see if they'll eat with their trainer here." I nodded. "Will you be staying in the trainer accommodations with them Bella?"

"I can do that?"

She nodded. "Yes on this wing of the critical care facility, trainers are allowed to remain with their dragons overnight, provided that the doctor agrees. He left orders saying that if you wanted to, you could stay with them. It might help stave off their depression and maybe get them more comfortable. They're pretty easy going with their treatments, but we can tell they're getting pretty unhappy being here and want to go home."

I nodded, I wanted to stay. "Can I stay?" I asked my ancestors.

Hiccup and Astrid looked at each other for a moment. Then nodded. "It's okay if you want to stay here. But you'll have to take it easy and get some rest, you were just in the hospital yourself after all," Astrid told me. I nodded in agreement, I still didn't feel completely well. Anna led us back to the dragon's room saying that she'll bring up their lunches. Hopefully they would eat now that I was here.

Two black blurs were on me the second I walked in the door behind my ancestors, screeching and rubbing up against me. I almost fell to the floor, but Hiccup grabbed me and helped me regain my balance. I just laughed and petted them as they nuzzled against me. "I take it you missed me?" I asked, laughing as I scratched them. Two long wet tongues licking my face was my answer. "Eww," I laughed. "I'll take that as a yes."

Anna had come in behind us with their lunch and seen the entire exchange. "That's the most energy we've seen from them since they were admitted," she mentioned as she set the two platters of fish and meat on the floor by their bed. I just laughed, too busy trying to get them off of me to say anything.

After a few minutes of enthusiastic greeting, both finally calmed down and I led them back to their bed where they settled down. Ancestor had told me on the boat that dragons were able to understand, to an extent, what I was saying and were even able to mimic human speech to an extent. Now not every dragon was able to do this, some simply couldn't for one reason or another, but I knew mine could, though it didn't take a genius to figure out that they'd been worried sick about me since yesterday and that that was at the root of most of the problems. "So, I'm told that you guys don't want to eat, is that right?" I asked as I settled in beside them on their granite bed. It was surprisingly comfortable. Anna went about checking their IV's and things after their sudden bout of activity and I could tell that she was both surprised and pleased that they hadn't ripped their IV's out with all the jumping and playing they'd done. The dragons started to purr as they nuzzled into my sides and I somehow felt like they were trying to distract me. Too bad. "You have to eat so you can get better and come home with me," I told them. They continued to purr. My ancestors settled into the visitors chairs in the room and watched us, but I paid them no mind. I reached over onto their platters and pulled a fish from each and offered it to them. They turned up their noses. Strange, I'd never seen them do that before. "Something wrong, Fury?" I asked. He just sniffed the fish and wrinkled his nose like he smelled something bad then snorted and turned away. "Is there something wrong with the fish?" I asked handing it to Hiccup who appeared at my side.

I watched as he sniffed it curiously. "I don't smell anything. It's fresh. The only difference I can tell is that it has a vitamin added to it."

"Maybe they don't like the vitamin?"

"Maybe," Hiccup said, taking it out of the fish and offering it again to Fury. He sniffed it and took it, but I could tell he was reluctant, there must still be some of the vitamin left in it. Hiccup then offered him the vitamin, but neither he nor Nightshade, when prompted, would take it. "They don't like it, but they need it. It'll help them gain strength." He handed me the vitamin. "See if you can get them to take it." I did as asked, but got nowhere fast. I switched from the vitamin to giving them the fish. They ate most of them, but would not touch any of the fish that had vitamins in them unless we removed them. "We have to figure out a way to get them to take the vitamin. They need it to help them regain strength and also muscle mass, and it helps their immune systems fight the infection."

"What about putting it in the IV?" I wondered.

Hiccup shook his head. "It's meant to be absorbed slowly, like the nutrients you absorb while digesting the food."

"What about putting it in something sweet? Can they eat sweet things?" I asked.

"They can, but, like for every other animal, they shouldn't eat too much of it."

"So maybe mashing them up in some apple sauce or berries would help?" Astrid mentioned.

"Worth a shot," Hiccup agreed.

I petted and kissed Fury and Nightshade's heads, telling them I'd be back in a minute and followed Astrid out of the room. We went back to the market and straight to the fresh fruit stand, picking out some strawberries and apples then taking them home and mashing them up along with their vitamins. I decided to taste a bit, just to see why they were so reluctant to eat it, and immediately regretted it. "Yuck, it's so bitter," I told Astrid.

She looked at me. "Bitter?"

"Yes, I can hardly taste the apples or berries. Maybe adding some honey or sugar will help." She nodded and brought out the honey. Adding some did indeed help but it still had a bad taste. Sugar wasn't good for them, so we had to come up with something else. I took out some frozen berries from the freezer and mashed them into the compote along with a bit of mint then tasted it. It was better, still a little bitter. I added a little more honey and that finally did the trick.

"Better?" Astrid wondered.

I nodded. "It still has a bit of bitterness to it, but it actually enhances the flavor. Should we add more honey and try to hide the bitterness completely?"

"No, that'll be too much sugar. They need to gain weight, true, but they shouldn't eat too much sweet or it will make them sick." I nodded. We picked up the dessert platter we made and took it back to the hospital.

We found Fur and Nightshade passing, clearly agitated. "Finally, Fury and Nightshade didn't like Bella leaving. They've been restless," Hiccup told us as he took the platters from us. We served them up to the dragons, and I watched them sniff curiously as they studied their dessert.

"Come on, you two. It's good, Mamman and I made it for you," I tried coaxing them. They took a reluctant lick of the sorbet we'd made. I could see their eyes light up at the taste, there was little taste of the vitamin left. They quickly downed the sweet cold mixture and then settled down to rest. I grinned, high fiving my ancestors. At least that worked well.

"We need to figure out another way to get them to take the vitamins," Astrid said as she settled in beside her husband.

"But this one worked well, why not keep using it?" I wondered as I settled down with them, laying my head against Nightshades side.

"It did work well and we will still use it, but it's not good for them to eat so much sugar too often, and they'll be taking those vitamins for months. Dragons are omnivores, they'll eat anything, but, being predators, their main diet had to be protein so they can stay healthy. The fruit blend we made was a good idea but can't be used often. Too much sugar can make a dragon very sick."

I nodded, thinking. A few minutes later, the light bulb went off over my head. "Gummy bears," I said.

"What?" Hiccup asked.

"I had to take vitamins as a kid to help me gain weight since I went through a bout of picky eating and also to help strengthen my bones after repeated fractures. But I wouldn't take them because they tasted really bad, like them. My pediatrician advised my mother to try to get me to take them but nothing really worked until he started me on prescription gummy vitamins. They had the amounts I needed but tasted sweet and were chewy. They weren't actually sweet, just tasted that way. Why not try the same thing with them?" I explained.

My ancestors thought it over for a while. Finally Hiccup's eyes lit up. "Sweet things did work to get them to take the vitamins. It's not a bad idea. I'll look into producing them. But in the mean time we'd need something else to use for right now since your idea will take time."

I nodded and kept thinking. The rest of the day passed just like this. Their doctor came in the afternoon and went over with us about the procedure he wanted to do on Nightshade. It would be really painful for her but we had no choice. Still he was pleased to see them eating and drinking, clearly the fact that we'd been separated and that they knew I was sick was a contributing factor for their behavior, well that and the vitamins in the food. Mamman went back to their house to pack me a bag since I was staying overnight with my pets and brought me dinner from home as well. She even brought them more of the mixture we'd made and they quickly gobbled it up along with their dinner. When visiting hours were over I settled in to spend the night in the bed they'd brought in for me.

This was the pattern for the next several days. I went home in the morning to clean myself up and get changed then went back to the clinic to be with the dragons. I didn't spend every night there as it wasn't ideal, but definitely stayed on the days they had procedures done like Nightshade's debriding. I did finally come up with an alternative to get them to eat their vitamins. Since I always loved to cook I was learning the recipes of Berk and came up with what I called dragon stew. It was a thick, hearty fish stew to which I added either, lamb or beef as well as potatoes, carrots, celery, corn, herbs and spices. It hid the vitamin flavor completely and Fury and Nightshade gobbled it up like there was no tomorrow. I could even eat it and had actually put on some weight myself, which was good because I was 22 pounds underweight, and edging the line of becoming anorexic. They actually put on 15 pounds each, within a few days so things were going well. They would still be at the clinic, but since their infections were under control, they had good appetites, had gained weight and Nightshade was finally in the clear and would not be losing her tail, they were moved down to the regular admissions. If things continued going as they were, they would be coming home within a week.

A week after we arrived, I came home in the afternoon to and empty house. I knew my ancestors were away, working, Astrid had told me she'd be at the academy and Hiccup had a shift in the hospital. Since my dragons were doing so well, I would be starting classes the next day at the academy. I had only intended to come home for a few minutes to change into my glide suit since Hiccup was teaching me to glide later that afternoon, but after changing, I heard the door open. Curious, since I wasn't expecting either of my ancestors back yet, I went downstairs. Astrid was walking in the door, behind her were seven little kids. I knew that my ancestors were taking care of some of the orphans while the orphanage was being rebuilt after a fire, but I had yet to meet them as I had been at the clinic most nights, and they weren't here the times I'd come home. "There you are Bella," Astrid said as she walked over to me and gave me a hug. "How are Fury and Nightshade doing today?"

"Better," I told her. "The doctor's very pleased with their progress. He says that if things continue as they have they'll be coming home next week.

She smiled. "That's excellent news, sweetheart." One of the boys tugged on her sleeve. "Oh, I almost forgot. School let out early because there was a problem with the sprinkler system, so I picked the kids up and brought them home. They were lucky they didn't get wet, some of the other children were soaked to the bone. Bella, these are Cameron, Caitlyn, Achilles, Briseis, Lestat Jr., Akasha, and Tarquin; the kids that are staying with us," she introduced them as she pointed them out to me. The kids giggled and waved and I had to grin. "Kids, this is my granddaughter Bella." I grinned and waved. I was about to ask a question when there was a frantic knock at the door. Astrid flashed to it as the kids hid behind me.

"Ancestor! Ancestor!" a young man cried as he rushed inside, shutting the door behind him.

"What is it, Christophe? What's going on?" Astrid asked as she took a hold of his shoulder.

"We've got a major problem. One of the lookouts spotted 2 unknown vampires headed this way. They arrived before anyone could stop them and are hunting here. They haven't killed anyone yet, but nearly all of the other vampires are out hunting and the trainers are all at the academy. They are targeting children and women specifically and they have already bitten 2 dragons."

My eyes widened in horror. "Call out all the dragon trainer. Have you informed my husband?" Astrid said.

"Derek went to find him. Toothless was with him."

She nodded and grabbed a sword from the wall then turned to me. "Bella, stay inside. Go down to the basement, there's a tunnel there that leads to the hatchery. It goes straight there, there are no turns. Take the kids and run there, you'll be safe in the hatchery."

"What about Fury and Nightshade?"

"They're safe in the clinic, don't worry about them." I nodded and did as she said. She picked up a sword handle and gave it to me. I was confused. Why would you have a handle with no blade? "Here, this is a fire sword. Press the switch just under the hilt and out pops a flaming blade, it's one of Hiccups inventions. Take it, just in case. If one of them enters the hatchery, they'll have to deal with the dragons there, but, well in case you needed it. All you have to do is touch the flaming blade to the vampire and it will be enough." I nodded and tied the handle to the belt of my glide suit. She nodded after making sure I tied it right and I grabbed the kids' hands and ran with them to the basement.

Once we were downstairs, one of the boys helped me open the secret door to the tunnel, and we ran down it and out of sight. I was surprised he was able to lift the lid on the tunnel as I could barely manage it, but now wasn't the time. We followed the tunnel all the way to the other entrance where there were other people waiting to let us into the hatchery. I went down to my family nests which were on one of the lowest levels, the kids trailing behind me. I figured, being on one of the lowest levels, it would be harder for anyone to reach us. Once reaching the nest, I couldn't help but look over my eggs, checking on them visually to make sure everything was fine, call it maternal instinct but I had begun to think of those eggs as my own babies in the past few weeks since we found them, but who could blame me considering that they were so precious. Once I was certain everything was fine, I turned to the children that had come with me, finally getting a good look at them.

Some look like they were, at most, grade-schoolers while others were toddlers and I had to wonder how those toddlers were in school already as they were clearly too young, looking like they were barely 2-years old. As I studied them they were also studying me, and were honestly far calmer than any child should be in this situation. One boy and girl, twins I presumed since they were very seminal physically, that Astrid had introduced to me as Cameron and Caitlyn, had almost identical mops of blonde hair, though Caitlyn's was long and curly reaching down to her shins since it was tied up in braids at the moment, though I was sure that when she would let it down it would be at her ankles while Cameron's hair only went down to just past his shoulders, really too long for a boy though, but it suited him. They had almost cherubim features and pale alabaster white skin… Then I noticed their eyes. "Gold?" I thought, not realizing I'd spoken out loud until they grinned at me. I knew instantly what they were… vampires. And I was surprised and slightly scared, while on the boat, Hiccup and Astrid had begun teaching me about vampire history, things I would need to know to survive in the outer world and one of those things was the rule about the immortal children and why creating them was a bad idea. I knew hybrids had colored eyes like humans so these were pure vampires.

"We know, we know. And yes we're immortal children as you think. But only in the sense that we were turned as children," the girl, Caitlyn spoke up. She pulled out of her pocket a small box, opening it to reveal an intricately carved brooch in the shape of a crest. "This is the Volturi crest," she explained. "It was given to us by Aro himself when we and our other two siblings, Breseis and Achilles, left Volterra to prove that the Volturi knew about us and allowed us to live. We aren't like the others of our kind, we can control ourselves." I nodded in understanding, I wouldn't be sitting here calmly talking to her if that weren't the case.

I smiled and nodded and she grinned at me. Cameron took over the explanation then. "I imagine you're curious about us and how we came to be here if we were with the Volturi, correct?" I nodded. "Well you see, my sister and I have no recollection of being human or really of the first few years of our vampirism. In fact we don't even know how old we really are. Our memory doesn't really begin until we headed for Volterra. We'd heard of them, but don't know how, and of the law against immortal children so we turned ourselves in to them, right at their doorstep." He held up a hand to forestall the question he knew was coming. "Don't ask us how we could choose to do that, knowing we'd be killed when the smarter thing would have been to hide, we have no idea and, in hind sight, it really would have been better to hide. But we did do it and because of that, because we had such an ability to reason, beyond what they knew the other children could do, the Volturi chose not to destroy us, but study us. Aro had always been curious and eager to know more and collect knowledge. It's why his power to read minds, one touch and he know every thought your mind has ever had, is such a thrill for him, an addiction. He read our minds and saw that we really had little to know memory of anything before getting to Volterra or being human and even his power could unearth nothing beyond out trip to Volterra and our decision to go there. It intrigued him even more. His theory was that our maker, whoever he was chose to erase all our memories of him or her to protect himself from Aro and his people but chose to get rid of us and that's how we knew. He could have implanted the order to head to Volterra. But no one really knows."

Caitlyn picked it up there. "In Volterra, they treated us badly, like we were toys for their amusement as they saw fit and nothing more. Feeding was also excruciating for us. Both my brother and I are allergic to human blood, mildly enough that we can consume it, but allergic enough that it doesn't go down well. We had to force ourselves to feed from the people that were brought in for dinner. And would go for great amounts of time without feeding, until our situation was so desperate we had no choice but to give in and feed. After a few years of this Aro decided to take pity on us, well maybe not pity since we were merely toys to them, but he and a contingent of guards took us out into the woods and he taught us to feed from animals. Astrid told us that you knew the Cullen family and their creator Carlisle who are vegetarians like us?" I nodded. "Aro had watched Carlisle's feeding habits and learned from them so he taught us to hunt animals, not really thinking anything of it. Since that they, we've never fed on humans again. Animal blood to us, because of our allergy, is like what a human would taste like to vampires while humans make us feel very sick. We spent 150 years in Volterra and in that time Briseis and Achilles joined us," she said pointing out the other two oldest children, also twins. They were blonde too but with hair so light it looked white and ocean-blue eyes

Briseis took up the story there. "We're different than them, we're hybrids, like our other three siblings." I nodded. I had already noticed that since they all had different colored eyes. "Our story is actually as bad if not worse, you see we're Caius's, one of the Volturi brothers and the only one who doesn't have a power, children. One hundred and fifty years ago, a few months after Caitlyn and Cameron arrived in Volterra, a vampire couple passed through and with them was another child, about 10 years old. They were taken captive for creating and immortal child, but then, after reading their minds, Aro discovered the child was not an immortal but a human-vampire hybrid. The man had found the human girl and become infatuated with her. They weren't mates, he just liked her and he had gotten her pregnant. He'd always wanted a child and as a reward he turned her into a vampire after the child was born, saving her life since, for the most part, human women die when they give birth to hybrids unless they are here or are extremely lucky. They continued traveling together as a family and had come to Italy, not realizing they were so close to Volterra. Aro had them killed and the child as well even though they'd committed no crime simply because the girl had known he was a vampire while human even though it was a moot point now since she'd been turned already which was what the law demanded, her to be turned or killed, Aro was just in a bad mood that they and took it out on them. Caius had become curious about the process and whether or not it was easy. He chose a human girl from their own village, Volterra, who was unusually beautiful and also was nearly as pale as a vampire instead of the olive tone of most Italians. Her hair was a black and she had ocean-blue eyes. Caius had found her beautiful and impregnated her. Unfortunately we never knew her name and Caius would not tell us. She birthed 3 children, another boy and us, but our older brother and her firstborn, Caius II, died along with our mother when Caius's wife Athenodora, who had been angered by her husband's infidelity after more than 1,000 years, came to kill her and us.

"Caius didn't care about her or us, he merely wanted to answer a question and satisfy his curiosity but he had come to see us once he got word of our birth and arrived in time to save the two us from certain death. Athenodora had had guards watching the girl so that they would inform her of when we were born and she would kill us all in front of her before killing her too. He was angry at his wife's interference with his plans, he'd thought he could give us to her to raise so she would have children of her own, but it was not to be. So then the question of what to do with us came up. Athenodora would not raise us since she wanted us dead and he still wanted to see what we would become. He chose to give us to our human mother's family to be raised with the strict warnings that death would befall them if they revealed anything that they knew. The family was assigned 5 guards to permanently watch over them and ensure they kept the secret. The family left Volterra to stay away from Athenodora and we moved to England where we were raised in the country. Of course they hated having to raise us since we were the reason our mother died and they saw us as monsters because of what we were and what our father was so they were abusive, or as abusive as the guards allowed them to be, which wasn't much. Being Caius's children did have that advantage at least, our guards protected and hunted for us. We didn't like human blood so they hunted animals for us. But we grew very slowly, being type 4 hybrids and the family had ended up dying out so we were sent back to Volterra once they were all gone so Caius could decide what to do with us. Athenodora was horrible to us, our guards had a full-time job of keeping us alive. Aro decided to join us with Caitlyn and Cameron and we became siblings, with our older siblings helping us stay safe from that witch."

Achilles picked up the tale there. "A few years later, while enduring their treatment since we too were nothing more than toys and running from Athenodora, a vampire with the ability to see the future passed through the area and paid his respect to the Volturi. He wasn't very accurate with his predictions but it intrigued Aro so he decided on a test. Previously we had asked him for permission to leave Volterra to get away from Athenodora and Caitlyn and Cameron wanted to leave too and find a coven that would take us in. He decided it was the best test and asked the vampire to see into our future. He saw us leaving Volterra and joining a coven of vampires and being well there plus keeping the secret. What he didn't know because he had the second vision after Aro had given us permission to leave as a test of his power was that he saw us being adopted by a woman but he couldn't see her. We left Volterra and traveled the globe. While traveling we ran into a human woman while out hunting. She was setting traps to catch animals so she could get their blood for her three kids. That's Lestat, Akasha and Tarquin," he said pointing them out. Lestat took the tale up from there and he pulled a picture out of his pocket handing it to me. I looked it over and saw the three of them siting with a vampire man and a human woman. Lestat had curly blonde hair that reached to his waist, and sapphire blue eyes that were iridescent with pale skin like backlit alabaster, high cheekbones and a Grecian nose. He actually looked a lot like the description of the Lestat in the Vampire Chronicles, their father and they looked almost identical, only their eyes were shaped differently. Akasha and Tarquin were both exotic looking, just like their birth mom who had been in the picture with Lestat Sr., they had dark honey blond hair, violet eyes, but their features were clearly reminiscent of their father.

"Our tale is different. Our father was a vampire who fell in love with two different human women 25 years apart. I was born from his first union but my mother died when I was born because the doctor cut an artery and they couldn't stop the bleeding. He had slashed my back open too in utero," he said as he took his shirt off and showed me the huge, jagged scar on his back. It was nasty and jagged and went from his left shoulder all the way down to his right thigh cutting his right butt cheek in half. After buttoning his shirt, he continued. "I know, I know. And it won't heal. In fact my father had a very hard time saving my life because in some places the cut was skin deep and in others it flayed muscle tissue and you could see the bone. His venom was the only thing that worked to save me but my mother, she wasn't so lucky. The so-called doctor cut her abdominal aorta, and how he did that with her uterus in the way no one knows but he did and she bled out in seconds. My father killed him in revenge. Anyway, his venom sealed the cut but left this jagged cut in its place. He'd been treating me with his venom over the years to reduce it a little but it didn't really work. I still look like a toddler even though I am 27 now because I too am a type 4 hybrid, in fact we all are. About 18 years later he met Katherine, the woman in the picture and fell in love with her. They were true mates, unlike him and my mother though he'd loved her fiercely. Katherine found out what we were and accepted us and adopted me as her son although I was actually older than her since she was 17 and I 20. A year later, my brother and sister Akasha and Tarquin were born. And yeah I know the names are funny. Dad loved the vampire Chronicles, loved that his real name Lestat De Lioncourt was used and they got a kick after naming us after some of the characters in the books. He met the author at a book signing and found out that she had researched the name and found his family tree. His had been a rich family, not nobility but a rich merchant family, that died out with him since he was the last heir and she chose to use the name. Now Akasha and Tarquin grew normally until they were about 12 to 15 months old. That's when they stopped, which was the same thing I did, growing normally until I was about 2 ½. We've changed a bit, but not much. They're actually 6 years old which is why we're all in school here.

"Two and half year ago our parents and I were traveling. We led a more nomadic life, roaming the continental US and Canada and only staying in place for a few weeks at a time. We were in Ontario when we ran into another coven two men and a woman. The first man that came into the clearing and taken the leader position in front was easily the most beautiful man I'd seen, his skin olive-toned beneath the typical pallor, his hair a glossy black. He was of a medium build, hard-muscled, about the same size as my dad. He smiled an easy smile, exposing a flash of gleaming white teeth. The woman was wilder than the men with her, her eyes shifting restlessly between us all, her chaotic red hair quivering in the slight breeze. Her posture was distinctly feline. Her voice was soft, it was high — a babyish, soprano tinkling. The kind of voice that went with blond curls and pink bubble gum. She was beautiful but she made my skin crawl. The second male hovered unobtrusively behind them, slighter than the leader, his light brown hair and regular features both nondescript. His eyes, though completely still, somehow seemed the most vigilant. The scared me. I wasn't sure why but I had a bad feeling about them and I was right. It was three against one since Mom was still human at the time. But they didn't attack, instead the males spoke with dad while the woman watched us. The wind changed and mom's scent was blown at them along with ours. The nondescript male caught the scent first. My dad tried to warn them away but the male decided that he just had to taste the blood of a hybrid and their mother. They came after us.

"Dad was outnumbered but he had a gift like I do, the same one actually. Teleportation. But he couldn't teleport us fast enough. The guy was a tracker and once he caught our track that was it, we'd never lose him even with dad's ability. Dad managed to get us to an airport and rented a plane Katherine could fly it. It took valuable time we didn't have and they caught up with us. Dad barely managed to get us into the plane and Katherine got us in the air but he was left behind to distract them. They tore him to pieces while we were taking off. Katherine flew us to New York, and there we got a plane to Europe where we hid in England. That's where Cameron, Caitlyn, Achilles and Briseis found us. By then though it had been six months and mom had terminal cancer. Dad had been looking for a good remote place to turn her so we could remain there until she was stable but it didn't work out that way. When they found us, she was already terminally ill." He couldn't go on. O took in min my arms and cradled him in my lap hugging and shushing him in comfort. These poor children had suffered so much. And I bet I knew who went after them. The very ones that had hunted me, James, Laurent and that witch Victoria.

Cameron took up the explanation then. "We remained with them until she passed on. She didn't want to be turned after the loss of her soul mate, though we probably couldn't have done it anyway. After she passed, we took her kids with us. And traveled the world. Her mate had been made by an old coven that had knowledge of an even older coven that left behind books with their knowledge. Katherine had one in her possession and the clues to find the rest. We decided to travel around and see if we could find the cashes. Which we did. It took months but we finally found all the cashes of books of what we had begun to call _'the Coven of the Enlightened'_, though we couldn't study them, lacking the knowledge needed to work with them. We'd decided to head to Alaska, looking for the last cash that was supposedly in a sunken ship. A storm caught us and tossed our tiny boat into the archipelago. We were lost, with no idea where we were. We saw an island in the distance and headed there, finding Dragon Island. Astrid and Hiccup were there, leading a group of young trainees in an expedition to find and train their first dragons and helped us. They brought us back here where we've remained since," he finished.

I smiled. At least here they seemed happy. I cuddled Lestat to my chest as we continued to talk about the things they saw in their travels. My ancestors had the books the kids found and were working to translate them. Perhaps I could learn to work with them and unearth the secrets that they contained; I always did so love a mystery. Over the next few hours, the kids told me all the stories of their travels. They told me that finding the books had not been easy. Katherine had given them the clues she had been given by her mate, but they were in codes and it took a while to decipher the clues, translate them to modern terms and follow the map they painted to where the cashes were. Seven cashes in total with the 8th having been in Katherine's hands which she found in the ruins of the temple of Zeus in Greece along with her mate and handed to the children upon her death, and the 9th and last was in the graveyard of ships near Dragon's Edge, the outpost my ancestors established when they decided to explore beyond the archipelago. It contained 150 tomes. One cash containing 200 volumes had been hidden in a little valley where the mouth of the Blue Nile was. Ironically, I had seen something very similar in a movie. Another cash, containing 50 very thick tomes, had been hidden in the deep forests of Scotland in a little cave that had strange drawings which Cameron identified as looking like they were druidic he promised to show me pictures when we got back to the house. Yet another had been hidden in the southern U.S. deep in cave in Death Valley, and this one had 15 volumes two of which needed to be restored before even attempting to decipher them.

The 4th cash, which contained 50 tomes, was found in a Mayan Pyramid, which I was sure had not been discovered yet. The 5th and largest cash was found Italy at the foot of Mount Vesuvius in a yet undiscovered and unexplored portion of Pompeii. It contained 550 tomes of various sizes and I was glad that one had survived the fall of Pompeii since I would have bet good money that it would have been lost. They'd been lucky enough that there was a minor earthquake in the area, which uncovered the site so they could find the books, otherwise it probably would have been lost. Unlike all the others were, that cash was written in Latin and was easier to decipher since Cameron and Caitlyn knew the language from their time in Volterra. The papers had called it a freak act of nature, which uncovered a previously unknown portion of the city and the scientific world was in an uproar for it. Astrid had sent the location of the Mayan Pyramid to an archeologist who was a descendant of hers just to see what would come of it. And once again the scientists were in an uproar, it would be fun to watch what came off of their little discoveries. The 6th cash, which had 10 thick tomes to it, had been found in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in previously unknown ruins hidden in an almost impenetrable valley. Now I don't know why I think this but I think it may be the very place where Babylon had once been. Wouldn't it be hilarious if a bunch of babies discovered Babylon? The next cash, which continued 125 tomes, was the furthest to be found. I found it in Japan, in the ruins of a temple in the island of Hokkaido. The last cash, Astrid and Hiccup helped them find. Ironically, it was in the very same ship, the Ripper, that they had found the dragon projector with information on all new dragons. They hadn't explored the ship in the past when they found it because of all the traps, but they explored it then and found a cash of 225 books which were written in Viking runes though the languages were from different countries along with a bunch of scrolls and other things, even treasure.

We spent several hours in the hatchery until Astrid and Hiccup came for us, getting to know each other. I regretted not having met them earlier. In that time I had begun to feel as if they were supposed to be mine. I grew very attached to them very quickly. When Astrid came to get us later that night, after everything had been handled, I was sitting with the children asleep around me Akasha and Briseis' heads resting on my lap as I ran my fingers through their hair. Cameron and Caitlyn were telling me more about their travels in low voices so as to not wake their siblings. When I noticed them they were smiling at the tender picture. I smiled back. Gently I lifted the girls from my lap and went to them. "Is everything alright?" I asked low as Cameron and Caitlyn joined me.

They nodded. "Yes, we managed to catch them, but they did give us a good runaround before we did."

"Who were they?" I wondered.

Hiccup shook his head. "We don't know, they're not one of ours. They were newborns though so we decided to hold them for questioning before deciding whether or not to destroy them since they didn't manage to attack anyone except for two dragons, though that was because they were afraid of them. Some of the other vampires are keeping them captive in the grotto where Hiccup found Toothless. I think they were headed to Asia and cross into our territory by accident and decided to hunt here after catching the human's scents here."

"Is everyone alright?" Cameron asked.

Astrid nodded picking him up. "Yep, they didn't attack any of our humans and the dragons are immune to vampire venom so all they did was break the skin. And actually they are getting sick because of the dragon blood they ingested. Dragon blood is mildly poisonous to vampires after all. It won't kill them but will give them very bad stomach aches for a while." I nodded as we picked up the sleeping children and helped me carry them back to their house. It was late at night, about 11:30. We'd eaten dinner earlier that was prepared by the other people hiding in the hatchery. It was delicious and all of the children enjoyed it even though we didn't eat from the same pots. They explained that vampires can eat human food just like hybrids but it had to be especially prepared. The pot they ate from was made specifically from them while I ate human food. I asked what they meant by_ 'especially prepared' _and they explained that there was blood protein added to their food to make it palatable. The hybrids could eat it without the blood like I did, but it wasn't very appealing. Eating it with blood made it more appealing and for vampires it made it palatable. However only vegetarians could eat it. They explained that human drinkers couldn't because there was something in the human blood that prevented no matter how much blood was added to the food. Animal blood did it but no human drinker could eat it with it, it still tastes just as bad as if it didn't have anything. If I ever saw the Cullens again, Esme would get a kick out of that. She loved to cook and would finally get to cook food that her family could eat. After arriving back at the house we put the children to bed in their rooms, the four boys sharing a room with two sets of bunk beds while the girls shared another room with a bunk bed and a raised bed. Both rooms had desks for them to do homework in and toys. Clearly they were well cared for despite being orphans, but then that's what I expected from my ancestors.

I did ask about why Cameron and Caitlyn had beds when they didn't need them and there was no need for the charade here and my ancestors explained that they did. Vampires can't sleep, not the same way that humans can, but they can go into a trance like state that similar to a human's catnap or a deep meditative state. It helps to ward of the boredom that vampires experience as well as the insanity older vampires get when they have seen so many years progression without break as if life had become one long Monday. Most vampires aren't aware that they do this on occasion to give their brains a chance to rest, but they learned to control it and use it more often. Cameron and Caitlyn chose to sleep nightly alongside their siblings while they only chose to take the sleep trance about once a month to rest their brains. It was something they had learned from the ancient vampires that had trained them. The other benefit it had was that it helped prevent petrification from a too sedentary lifestyle. All in all I thought it was good and if I found the Cullens I would let them know. Maybe I could leave them the information in their house in Forks for whenever they came back so they would know.

Over the next week, I got to know the children more and even brought them to meet Fury and Nightshade, who took to them surprisingly easily. They were gentle and playful with the children which pleased me greatly. I was also pleased that they were doing so much better and would be coming home soon. By the time the dragons came home I had made my decision. I asked my ancestors if it was at all possible for me to adopt them, knowing full well it probably wouldn't be. I was in for a surprise though. It was possible. The rules were different in Berk. As long as I was an adult, which there was at 17 years of age, and had means to support them, there was no problem. The means to support them I thought would be a problem until I went to the bank in Berk to get a bank statement for the adoption papers and discovered the number of zeros on my account. I looked at Hiccup flabbergasted. There were 4.5 billion dollars in the account since the statement gave me the balance in different outer currencies. Come to think of it, how did they open an account for me?

Hiccup laughed. "Shocked? Chill out Bella. It's not what you're probably thinking. You see, your great, great, great grandmother's parents were very wealthy. They made quite a fortune in their day, but they only had one daughter and she chose to leave Berk and her family behind not wanting anything to do with us. When they passed on she never came to collect her inheritance and although she had three sons, only one ever came back to the island. He claimed the inheritance and added to it. His children also did the same until your grandma and Charlie. Since Charlie has never wanted anything to do with this family including the inheritance and had actually repudiated the inheritance on his last trip here even though he had you to think about it now it passes to you as the last living descendant. The gold we put there came down to about 5 million dollars at today's market, not a lot although the vein we found could be mined for more. The rest of it is the fortune plus over a century's worth of interests. After all you're the 7th generation since it was made and the last living heir. You could refuse it, but I wouldn't advise it. You're becoming a vampire and you live in the outside world. There or here though, it takes money to survive, but more so when you're out there. You need to establish identities with convincible paper trails, buy properties to live in. If you're serious about adopting the kids then even more so you need to do these things. You could live as a nomad but even then you'll need money from time to time and identity papers. Paper trails, particularly those that would fool even the best experts cost a lot of money. We have a list of the people that deal with this kind of thing around the globe for those that need it and you'll be getting that as well later on. It's not as much as it might seem when you think about the fact that you'll live forever, and even less when you have children that depend on you that will live forever. It's why your sister Alice's gift comes in so handy for her family, to fund their eternity."

"But how did you open the account?" I wondered.

"We didn't. It's been here for generations. All we did was advise the bank that you had arrived and when they asked you for your information they simply transferred the account to your name after unfreezing it. The bank here doesn't work like the banks outside do. For one thing there's trust since most everyone here is related in same way or other and the accounts held here are family heirloom accounts, for the most part. If you chose to repudiate the inheritance then it would be refrozen and would lay in wait accumulating interests until you heirs came for it just as was done before you."

"But if the bank doesn't work like the ones on the outside, how can I use the money out there?"

"Simple. The banks procedures are one thing but how it works is another. The other papers they told you they had to give you which is why we're waiting, are the account papers, now in your name, the checks attached to them and the credit and debit cards. This bank works like the Swiss banks. The accounts are encoded accounts to protect the identity of the owner of the account. And it's untraceable, but we still have liaisons with other banks across the globe so you can get money at ATMs and use the checks and cards. It's the same thing as the Cullens have in their accounts, I imagine. Because it would look weird to have fattened accounts that are traceable to people that are centuries old and still coming in to do transactions, always looking the same. This is set up so that you have a secure internet access to do all your transactions even getting cash currency from around the world which would take several days to get to you, although you can get it from any ATM. My advice though is don't tell Charlie about this. When you're a vampire you will have to disappear from your parents' lives. You'll be too different for them to continue seeing you. This money is meant to help fund your eternity so Charlie shouldn't know it exists so that he can't try to claim it once you're gone and chance tracing you through it. I don't think he will since he refused it when it was offered to him, but it's possible so it's better if he doesn't know it exists." I nodded in understanding and would follow his advice. "He also shouldn't know about the children and their adoption," he said all of a sudden.

I looked at him confused, having been broken from my thoughts. "Why not? I think he would love them."

He shook his head. "I'm not so sure about that. But that's not the point. The point is that, to Charlie, this isn't a legal adoption, legally the children, hell the entire archipelago, don't exist. And the children are different. He would notice that, and when you need to disappear it's better he not know of them so that he won't miss them. This way you'll only need to face your disappearance, which is much easier. The children can take care of themselves, they only look like children and although they behave like their ages they are far older and mature. You could get a property and move there. Tell him that you're moving out so you can make a safe home for your dragons. If he won't let you, remind him you're an adult. Astrid and I had decided that we'll leave with you in March to help you set everything up and also so that we can help you set things in motion so that you can disappear later, after your graduation or sooner if needed. But we have time to deal with all of this later. The point is that the less Charlie knows, the better off he'll be." I nodded in understanding. It hurt me to have to do this to him but things were as they were. Once I was given the papers, that indeed included checks, and cards, we left the bank with a sack of gold, silver, platinum and copper coins so I could go to the markets. We took the paperwork to the adoption agency beside the orphanage. Okay so it was the house of the social worker in charge of the orphanage. I had asked what had started the fire and he explained that a gas pipe had broken and there was a small explosion that consumed the place. The nearby houses were far enough away to not be affected since the orphanage had a very large plot of land for an all-around yard. And no one was hurt since that day, everyone had been either in school or out with foster families in case of the babies. Once I handed the paperwork to the woman, whose body reminded me of a Barbie doll, and she seemed as fake since she'd obviously had work done, she said I was approved and handed me the papers to sign. I smiled, now they were mine. Through all of this time, I barely saw Charlie since he chose to stay in the house and rarely came into town. When he did though, we would always argue since he didn't want me doing anything that I was doing, but I didn't care what he said. We had a huge fight and, for a moment, I though he might hit me, but nothing happened. We parted company with him extremely angry with me, but it didn't matter. The next day, now that my dragons were home from the hospital, I began my training to become a Dragon Trainer in earnest.


	7. 6 DRAGON ACADEMY PT 1: DRAGON ISLAND

**I'M BACK! So at long last I've found some time to finish the chapter I had been working on. To all of you who reviewed and encouraged me to continue than you. This is a labor of love and I just needed to make sure what I put out for your enjoyment is the best it can be. I haven't and will not place any of my stories on a permanent hiatus. I still work with them whenever I find the time but as I'm studying it's not as much as I have wanted it to be. I'm currently working on the next 3 chapters and hope to have them up soon but I couldn't wait to finally share this one.**

**I am also working on my very first Mortal Instruments story but will not be posting it for some time as I want to get it further ahead before posting it, perhaps even finish it. **

**I received a review which pointed out that my chapters are a bit longwinded. I know I realized it which is why some have been cut into parts unlike the original outline which had only 20 chapters, very long chapters. I tried cutting them down a bit but unfortunately there's too much information needed to cut them down too much, after all it is a merger of two universes so to unite them we need more info. Another question I received was if I was going to focus on Edward. My answer is that yes I am, but this is primarily Bella's story until I reunite them which yes I have already chosen how from all of your votes and wonderful reviews. The next two chapters will deal with the end of Bella's trip to Berk and her trip home. The chapter after that is strictly to catch up with our favorite angsty vampire and his family and from there on there will be other chapters or parts of chapters that will look in on him as needed as I get them to the reunion, but it will be mainly Bella's story. As a warning to you all, once Bella sets foot in Forks things will got to hell in a hand basket for her. I have to make it this way because it is a big part of the final showdown. And again for those of you who are Team Jacob or werewolf fans… stop reading now. You won't like what will happen with them, but it is what it is and what doesn't kill you will make you stronger… Oh dear I have said too much… Or have I?**

**Sailor FoxFire**

* * *

**6\. Dragon Academy Pt. 1: Dragon Island**

Dragon Training 101. And I was starting about two weeks later than I was supposed to. True to their word, I was mostly training at my ancestors' side instead of the academy proper which meant my training was skyrocketed, passing though the different stages and exams far quicker than anyone. The Academy, with the help of my ancestors, had created an accelerated curriculum for me, to help me catch up with my peers, and ever surpass them. After the hullabaloo of the adoption and Fury and Nightshade were released from the clinic I was finally able to attend a class at the academy. My schedule was made so that I was studying by myself instead of with the other students since I was beyond the other first timers with 4 exams passed but not quite at the level of second years, knowledge wise, the academy being a 4-year school. My classes at the academy consisted of: Herbal Sciences where I learned to prepare different remedies for dragons and people, Dragon History, where I learned the history of my people from when they first came to Berk to today and all the changes and this was served, not in the academy but at the museum, Dragon Care and Husbandry where I learned to care for my pets and also was prepared for my last trainee exam so that I could become a dragon trainer, Wilderness survival where I was taught how to survive in the forests, and lastly Dragon Anatomy and Physiology where I was taught how the bodies of my dragons worked as well as all other dragons. The academy had many more classes but I would sit through none of them as the rest of my training came directly from my ancestors. I had half days where all my mornings, while the kids were in the school themselves, were spent in class and then I spent the afternoon training with my ancestors. And I have to say that this is the first time I've ever been happy to go to school. Sure I loved to learn and read but this was the first time school was exciting to me. Especially when I was taught how to make a bomb in Herbal Class… Okay I'm kidding. But the class was still fun.

My Herbal Sciences teacher was a 100 year old vampiress named Anna Tifton. She actually wasn't related to any of the families in the island but had actually married into the family since her mate was a descendant of the family of one of my ancestors' friends. She was very eager to have a student who actually gave a damn about her class. She taught me alone in her classroom while all the other students were in the training grounds working on their dragons which meant that since this was a one-one one class so we covered far more material than we would have in a normal setting. Within the first 3 weeks I had already completed the first years' worth of Herbal Sciences, learning about the Blue Olyander and how to make the antidote for it from the venom of a Scauldron, I learned to make the antidote for eel pox among other things. Really by the time I was leaving Berk, I had already completed 3 years' worth of herbal sciences as well as an advanced class. It was the same for all my other classes at the academy. By the time I was ready to leave, or should I say was dragged back to Forks by Charlie even though I had wanted to stay in Berk, I had completed all of my textbook classes: Herbal Sciences 1-3 plus the advanced class meant for 4th years should they choose it, Dragon Care and Husbandry Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced, Dragon History 1 and 2 plus Berk History, and the textbook part of Wilderness training.

But that wasn't all I learned while there. After all, I was training with the original dragon masters. Astrid and Hiccup took me out to see pretty much the entire archipelago and see all the different dragons in their natural habitats, which enhanced my knowledge for dragon anatomy two-fold. They also took me into the different wilderness settings available in the archipelago and in Alaska and taught me how to survive with only my wits, knowledge and of course my dragons as well as without them. Now Fury and Nightshade were nowhere near ready to do any of this so Toothless was their stand in and it paid to have an experienced dragon while training since he could compensate whenever I made mistakes. But they also taught me the really good stuff: how to fly on the back of a dragon, aerial acrobatics, gliding and my personal favorite, dragon racing. Seriously, by the time I was on the boat for home I had already passed all of the trainer tests and the first of the 3 dragon master tests as well, which was unheard of to do in only about 4 months, well more like three since the round trip to and from Berk takes a month, truly my ancestral parents' child. Hell, everyone started calling me the Dragon Princess and it stuck, just as Hiccup's nicknames, Dragon Master and Dragon Conqueror had stuck though Dragon Master was what everyone called him now. I guess I finally found something I exceled at, and it's supposed to be mythological. Are you starting to get the picture? Now you probably want more details and I have plenty to share…

Late-January found me bringing Fury and Nightshade home at long, loooooonnnnnnggggggg last. I was still staying with my ancestors, though I had picked out a plot of land on the island and begun construction on a house for me here. It was going to be a big one, like my ancestors since I now had 7 children and Astrid was designing it for me. I let her have her fun with it and design it however worked best, only asking that the bedrooms all had bathrooms of their own since I figured a bunch of kids sharing one bathroom would be a nightmare even if two of them only needed them for baths. She had chosen a 25-bedroom design which to me was more of a castle than a house, much to my chagrin. I mean I even asked her about it, not planning to have that many children ever even if by some miracle Edward and I got back together and had kids together, which I admit I very much wanted. She laughed and explained that the house was more practical than it sounded. Whatever bedrooms weren't in use could be turned into anything else as needed, playrooms, home offices, whatever. She also expected the Cullens to come live here in my house eventually even though I doubted it so there were bedrooms added for them as well.

"Bella, you need to remember that you don't actually need your mate to get pregnant. With the venom in your body, it can happen at any time with or without him, which is why I had instructed you to keep an eye on your cycle and take frequent tests. There's no stopping it, since the venom's in your system already, there are no prophylactics that can work against venom, it will just destroy them, so it is better to be safe than sorry. You may end up needing all the extra room even if you don't think so now," she had said and that had scared the crap out of me. I mean I was basically permanently pregnant when she put it that way. I told her so and she laughed. "NO, not permanently pregnant. Merely highly receptive to the fertility inherent in venom. Transformation, at least for us vampires – not sure exactly about the other supernaturals –, is basically our form of reproduction, asexual reproduction that is, and the venom is the conduit that gets it done. It has to be this way since we only get 1 breeding season every 5,000 years or so according to what we learned from Lugalme Ninshuel and his wife Ninbaradari Zimuandagal, and the greater majority of vampire females are still sterile even during the season. Taking it on a purely biological sense, the only way for our species to thrive is by transforming humans into vampires, it's our only viable avenue to continue the species. Now because of this, when venom is introduced to a human, a creature with a much simpler and relaxed breeding schedule than ours, it tends to overcompensate, creating the little problem you have. But really, there are no guaranties. Your best option for reproduction is still with your mate which is as nature intended for both of you, but you have the possibility even without him. Which reminds me that I've meant to ask you, is there anything we don't know about your relationship with him?" I looked at her confused. "What I mean is, well I'll just put it bluntly, were you sleeping with him?"

"Well, yes, he spent the night with me nearly every night?" I hedge, knowing what she was asking.

"Cute, Bella, but you know that's not what I meant." I didn't answer her, I was trying very hard to hold myself together and not thing about anything of the sort. It hurt too much. I don't know what Astrid saw in my face but she didn't press me further on the subject, though I doubted I could get anything past her. I'd gotten good at hiding my pain, but she could see right through me in true mother fashion. Anyway, my house was already well under construction, whenever the weather was gentle enough for that, and she said that it would be ready within 5 more months which was surprising to me. I mean I'm no expert but a house like that would take years to build back home. I guess there was something to be said for Viking efficiency and also for vampire strength and stamina.

After my morning classes at the academy a week or so after I had started them, I went by the clinic and was given the good news. Fury and Nightshade were ready to come home and I could take them home that very day. I was thrilled to no end. After signing the papers and getting their medical orders since their recovery would be long, I led my best friends home to my ancestors' house. Astrid was there to greet us since I happened to have my first class with her on dragon riding that afternoon and she fussed over them like a mother hen with her eggs, pleasantly surprised that they were released that day as we had believed it would be at least another few days. "The doctor explained that, although they still have quite a ways to go and really needed a little more time at the clinic, the dragons were getting too restless to allow that. He was getting concerned that their confinement was starting to have a negative effect on their recovery so he sent them home."

Astrid nodded. "Good, they'll get better faster at home. How are their tails?"

I smiled. "All healed up. More or less. The scars have sealed up completely and there are no more signs of infection so we were able to save each of their remaining natural tail flukes. The scales are taking their sweet time regrowing though."

She nodded. "Understandable. The infections were pretty severe so I'm not surprised. They may never regrow completely in the areas where there are scars though. Toothless' never did, that's why you can still see the bite marks from his fight with a Whispering Death long before Hiccup met him."

"Would that affect their getting their prosthesis?" I wondered as I settled Fury and Nightshade on their downstairs bed and gave them some food. They were still on a modified diet to help them gain weight since Fury and Nightshade were still very underweight.

"I don't see why it should. We'll give them a couple of days to get settled at the house and then we'll fit them with their prosthesis. Hiccup's already finished them but they're still back at the shop in case they need any tweaks." I nodded. "While you won't be able to ride them yet since you're still too new at it for it to be safe. Hiccup and I will start working with them on getting them used to the prosthesis and flying with the harness. You'll work with them on that as well so the three of you'll learn to work with them together, but under supervision. However, for the time being at least, until they get their strength back since they've not flown in weeks, it would be safer for all of you if Hiccup and I handled that part of their recovery for the most part." I nodded in understanding. I'd figured it would be like that. "But I think you'll all be flying together in no time at all." I grinned, happy with the news.

"Will they be okay to leave with me for Forks when we leave?" I wondered. Charlie had been making noise about going home early but I refused. I was pretty sure that he would drag me back to Forks as soon as the date came even though I actually didn't want to go.

"Maybe, maybe not. We'll have to see how they recover for the next few months and how they get used to the prosthesis and learn to fly with them. Regaining their weight isn't the problem now, they are both doing perfectly on that front. The problem is more in getting used to their disability and learning to work with their trainer to fly. Only once they've mastered that will we be teaching them to use the solo prosthesis. From what Hiccup told me, it took him and Toothless weeks to get the hang of the prosthesis and their teamwork. Trainer and dragon have to be in sync, they almost have to be able to read each other's minds so that they can work the two separated flukes together to control their flight and that isn't so easy. It took me some time to get the hang of it and that was with Hiccup teaching me how when that became a necessity. But you'll all pick up on it soon. You, at least, have the advantage of a teacher already experienced in this part of their recovery." I nodded in understanding as I was petting my pets. Still I thought things were looking up.

The kids arrived home from school after that and immediately started climbing all over the dragons, happy to see them home at last. Mamman and I laughed as we watched my eager pets playing with the children. After a few minutes of the entertainment, everyone settled down and it was now time for lunch, which today was my invention dragon stew and of course they got their portion as well with their vitamins. They'd gotten better at taking them but this was still the easiest way. After lunch, the kids went back to school for their afternoon dragon training classes. Yes, though the academy itself was for teenagers, it was basically the high school after all. All children and adults who hadn't learned before or wanted to take refresher courses, were welcome for classes in the afternoon while the teens were in their regular academic courses. It was a lot of work, but it was fun and learning young meant a greater affinity for the teaching and the dragons which was always a bonus and something I kinda wish I hadn't missed out on, as much of a star pupil as everyone says I am. After kissing the kids goodbye, Mamman and I left for my flight and gliding class. A class that had me both excited and filled with dread…

And why was I dreading it as much as I wanted to learn you may ask? Because my ancestors believed in throwing you to the deep end and hoping you could swim. And I was praying I could swim as I looked down at the ocean far below me while I stood at the top of one of the rock formations on the south-western shore of Berk, better known as the Sea Stacks. They were tiny little mountain-like rock formations that scared me just to think that I would have to fly anywhere near them. Now don't get me wrong. This isn't the first time I've flown on a dragon. Hiccup took me up and showed me how to work the tail fluke while we were headed here, but that was in the open ocean with no obstacles in between us. And to make matters worse, this was my first solo flight on Toothless. Before, either Astrid or Hiccup sat on the saddle behind me and had even added a second pedal to take control should I make a mistake. I had outgrown that part of my training, before we'd arrived on the island and this first solo flight had only been pushed off because there were so many other things left to do. Hiccup had taken me up for a refresher course to make sure I was ready for a solo flight, but this was the place where that kind of trial really counted, or so they said. I tried to take deep breaths to calm myself as I looked at the obstacle course Astrid had marked out before class. The objective was to grab or knock down the flags situated after different obstacle, 7 in total.

"Relax, Bells. It's not as hard as it looks," Astrid said as she rubbed my leather-clad shoulder. I was wearing my glide suit to be ready for the next part of today's lesson, learning to glide. And really I wished I knew how so that I could bail if needed. "I know it looks scary but all you have to do is follow the trail. For the first obstacle you merely need to bank to the right until you round the stack and can grab the flag, the next one is going through a series of loops to grab it from its place. Next is climbing up to the highest stack to grab the flag after which you'll dive down to the water to take the flag from the boat anchored below the stack. After that you'll bank to the left and go through the loop for the next flag, then hold a straight flight for a minute until you reach the arches and then fly up and then down each until you reach the flag. Finally, you'll fly zigzag through the menorah pillars and take the last one. I know it sounds complicated but you've played catch the flag before and done the exact same routine with us throughout all of your flight classes. You've even done them at high speeds. This time though, you'll fly slow and leisurely which will give you plenty of time to correct yourself if you make a mistake or stop if you need to. All you have to do is follow the path set up and take the flags, I'll be flying beside you on this Snow Wraith, which I've already trained for obstacle flying for the Academy students. The only difference is that now you have obstacles to conquer. Which you need to be able to do in order to fly most places. Even in the open ocean you could suddenly find obstacles or, most likely, while you're inland you'll find more obstacles than open spaces and need to be able to compensate. Toothless has done this my times before and can correct you should he need to, or stop if needed. So relax and let's begin."

I nodded, when she put it like that, it did sound easy enough. Though the visions of me splattered on the side of a stack wouldn't leave my head. I'd taken the habit of checking all the parts of the harness and tail fluke to make sure they were properly connected since I was still learning to dress a dragon in his prosthesis. It was Hiccup's idea, at least until I got the hang of it and could do it all without thinking about it, which would only happen with practice. Toothless rubbed his great head against my side and I giggled as I pet him. His purr sounded like he was saying, _'Don't worry, I'll take care of you.'_

"He's right Bella," Astrid said suddenly.

"Huh?"

Astrid laughed. "Toothless said 'Don't worry, I'll take care of you.' Remember, dragons can mimic human speech to an extent with their vocal cords. And he's right, you may be a newbie trainer, but Toothless has centuries of experience. It's the main reason why you're learning with him. There are other dragons with similar injuries here that you could have easily learned on and it wouldn't have made that much of a difference with your pets, especially if they had the same tail structure as a Night Fury. But you know that we felt it best that you learn this on a dragon that has more experience so he's able to compensate for any mistake or problems that arise. So relax and enjoy the flight." I nodded. After double checking everything, I climbed up on Toothless, settling on the saddle and putting my feet on the pedal. This particular saddle and harness combo was actually Fury's set. My ancestors thought that getting familiar with my particular equipment would be best now that it was ready and I had been working with it for a while, while doing the refresher course. It was the same design as Toothless' equipment but fitted for my use, though it was still his own tail prosthesis. With one last deep breath, we dove off the stack. Astrid led me through a series of warm-up moves so I could settle in the flight and dial up my use of the tail fin. Once that was done, and for once with no mistakes, it was time to tackle the stacks.

The first obstacle was in deed easy. We rounded the corner and I saw the flag on a small ledge and grabbed it as I passed. Now Astrid did say I could stop, but she meant if I made a mistake not while doing the course. That was a rule I learned early on. That way I would get used to a smooth flight pattern instead of the stop and go of newbie car drivers which is bad for both the dragon and also for the harness. Once I had the flag Toothless and I turned to our right and started on the loops. There were 15 in total and the flag was in the middle one. Most of the loops were in a straight line but for some we had to go up or down. I did make a mistake here, crashing into one of the loops when I didn't fly far enough up. Toothless and I were both fine, just annoyed.

"It's okay Bella, that's why you're learning. And really, ask Toothless how many times he and Hiccup crashed into obstacles before getting the hang of it. At least you did it slowly, theirs had way more speed," she laughed and I giggled, reassured.

I decided to start on the loops again and this time managed the whole course without problems and took the flag. Our next obstacle, the high climb was also very easy and Toothless and I were working together well. It was the next one that was a test in nerves, the dive bomb to the boat. Once we'd taken the flag, Toothless and I climbed higher up to clear the stack and then dove down and that is where the problem started. We were going far too fast and picking up speed, but during the climb we had veered off course so the boat was in the wrong position to take the flag and I couldn't stop. To make matters worse we were racing towards an arched stack and would surely smash into it. I was petrified and forgot for a moment how to do anything and the stack was coming in fast. Then, I don't know what happened but I just suddenly woke up and started controlling the flight. And just in time. Whatever instinct took over, I was able to steer us down and under the stacked arch making a right to take the boat flag then on to the next obstacles. We banked to the left and went through the loop to get the next flag then flew straight to the arches going up and then down each one, even adding a loop-de-loop underneath the last arch to take the flag. I wasn't able to grab it as we passed but we did knock it down which also counted and then we zigzagged though the menorah pillars which was a line of 15 thin pillars stacked nearly in a straight line and took the last flag. All at high speeds and without even thinking about how I was moving my foot just as I was supposed to. Toothless' idea of a celebration was flying through burst of his flame, which kinda scared me but I went along with it and it was so cool.

I was laughing the whole way back to the starting line and landed beside Astrid and, surprisingly, Hiccup. "I thought you were at the hospital," I said as I threw myself in his arms.

"What and miss your first flight? No way, besides there's nothing to do there," he answered hugging me tight. "I'm so proud of you. Looks like history repeated itself here today."

"What?" I asked grinning.

He grinned at me. "Toothless and I did the same thing on our first flight. Same mistakes and everything. I was using a cheat sheet which showed all the tail positions, the same one I had you study and memorize but don't let you use in flight. When we climbed up the wind knocked the sheet out of its holder and I nearly lost it. Problem was I accidentally had Toothless stop while we were still climbing up and gravity caught us, pulling us down and apart. I lost my seat but managed to get back on, but by then we were going to crash and couldn't pull up or slow down. I tried looking at the sheet but it wasted valuable time so we just went with it. It was instinct and I managed to position us so we could fly around and through all of the obstacles until we were out in open water, just as you did. Only difference being that you stayed in your seat."

"I did the same?" I asked amazed.

"Yep, and all on instinct which has to be how you control your flight. Did you notice how fast you were going?"

"No, we slowed down after pulling out of the—" I stopped after I saw him shake his head.

"No you did not. You sped up. In fact you sped up so much that when you pulled out of the dive and turned you made a sonic boom and again while going through the loops." I looked at him wide-eyed. I hadn't noticed. He laughed at the look on my face. "Yes, way faster than you've ever flown, as it should be. Night Furies are fast. That's something you have to get used to. But more importantly, your little adventure won you something."

"What?"

He smiled. "Congratulations Bella. You've passed Trainer exams 1, 2 and 3, Completed high-speed flight track, Controlled High-Speed flight and Evasive maneuvers. Now you only have 12 trainer exams left." If my eyes got any wider they would fall out.

"Really, so they're this easy?" I wondered amazed. I hadn't even taken my last trainee exam, dragon care and husbandry and already passed trainer exams?

"They're not supposed to be," Astrid said. "Most trainers have to be taught in steps how to do exactly as you did. It's even harder when you have the addition of teaching said trainer to react instinctively and in sync with their dragon to control a tail prosthesis. It's why newbie trainers don't train with disabled dragons, only experienced ones handle those dragons, unless of course the dragon has been with the trainer before the injury happened. In fact, most trainers, crash their dragons into the rocks on the training course and make too many mistakes their dragons can't compensate for until they get each lesson right. And that's with fully abled dragons. It's why we train dragons to work with academy students instead of letting them ride their own during lessons. That way, the dragon is better able to compensate for the student's mistakes and still they can crash. In all honesty, you're breezing through dragon training as if you'd been born on the back of a dragon and ridden them in the womb or something. Or maybe you really are just Daddy's Little Girl."

Hiccup's face was in danger of cracking with the smile it had. Daddy's little girl indeed. Still I was shocked at what I'd done. We'd flown so fast and completed a very dangerous course at high speed. SO COOL. I was in danger of channeling Alice and bouncing all over the place in excitement but seeing Hiccup pulling something out from a bag I had no idea he was carrying snapped me out of it. "What's that?" I asked curious.

Hiccup grinned. "A present. Sort of."

I immediately began to protest. "Oh but you guys have given me so—" Astrid wrapped her hand around my mouth to shut me up.

"If we want to give our daughter presents then she will accept them graciously and not nag. We love spoiling our kids, all of them. Besides this isn't a present so much as something you earned."

Now I was confused. From the bag, Hiccup pulled out two large boxes, one flat that kinda looked like a large pizza box and another square one that I had no idea what it was. He handed me the large box first. "Yesterday we had the quarterly meeting of the dragon counsel, which as you learned in class at the academy, is comprised of the heads of all the families in Berk. You also know that as soon as you complete your dragon training you'll also be eligible for a seat at the council since you are head of your own family now." I nodded, following him so far. "You know as well that one of the things we decide on is the ranking and the passing or failing of dragon trainees, trainer and even the masters since this is not so much an academic curriculum as a form of life, a life's purpose." I nodded again. And he grinned. "Now neither Astrid nor I are allowed to vote in your case since you are both our child and also our student, so don't go thinking that we arranged things for you as we saw fit, we might share the seat of the head of the council but we are refrained from voting on our direct students so as not to taint the vote." I nodded again. "Open the box, Bells." I did as asked and inside the box I found an ornate metal shield. I gasped, knowing what it was. Hiccup and Astrid both grinned. "Of course we did have this made for you when you arrived on Berk, but it couldn't be given to you until you passed the 5 trainee exams. As you know, the Gronckle iron shield is given only to those trainers who successfully conquer all 5 trainee exams as a sign that they are now dragon riders—"

"But I haven't taken the 5th exam yet," I said bewildered.

"That was discussed yesterday at the council. Your training is different that the training all other riders receive. It mirrors more a cross between what Toothless and I did while learning to fly and the one Astrid and our other friends received from me after the battle with the Red Death, which at the time we were all learning together instead of my teaching them everything, instead of the more academic study and structured study the other riders go though. Also, both of your dragons have special needs, hell you're handling two adults and sooner or later will be handling a bunch of hatchlings since your dragons came with eggs. But not only do your dragons have special needs they've been ill this whole time. The dragon care and husbandry exam is designed to show that you can in fact handle whatever situation your dragon may put you through in its lifetime, whether it is illness, injury, care for any future offspring as well as their every-day needs. Dragons, as you well know, are a high maintenance pet, a far bigger responsibility than a cat or dog, or any common pet. Hell, they're an even bigger responsibility than even exotic pets since you also have the added bonus of having to keep them a secret. But you've fallen into that role, like you've been doing it all along. Throughout these last weeks since we found them, you've done everything you need to, to care for them as they need. Therefore the council decided that you would be given the pass on the last exam since you have in fact covered every part of it and then some, therefore the shield is now yours."

"You're kidding me," I said in disbelief. Seriously, could things get any easier?

He shook his head. "Nope. While you still do need to learn how to use it since the shield is not merely ornamental, but it in fact has several weapons. Weapons that, by the way, you can use in a fight against a vampire because Gronckle iron can and will harm a vampire, it is yours."

I grinned now full-on bouncing around. Astrid took over as she handed me the other box. I opened it and found a golden ornate sword handle, with no blade. Odd. "It's a fire sword. Hiccup himself made it for you, though it is more ornate than any of his or mine. When you press the button on the hilt, out pops a Gronckle iron blade micro-sharpened to the finest and deadliest edge it can have. It sharpens every time it moves in and out. Press the second button on the hilt and it catches fire." Astrid said as she showed me how it worked. Each button was a different color so you couldn't confuse them: silver for the blade, orange for the fire blade, a green and a yellow button which I imagined were the flamethrower feature. "As you know this also shoots streams of Hideous Zippleback gas which when sparked turns into a stream of flame. The green button is for the gas and the yellow to spark it. Conquering the 1st trainer exam earns you the blade and also entrance into the class to learn how to use it and fight with it, same as the shield. We've already signed you up for it. As you can see it has space for 15 small jewels. Astrid pulled a bag out of the box and handed it to me. "The bag contains precious and semi-precious stones that go there, but it's like when you take martial arts. You earn the right to have each jewel when you pass the exams they represent and not sooner." I nodded in understanding. She opened the bag and pulled out three jewels, a turquoise stone, a garnet, and a pink topaz. "You earn the sword with the first exam as well as its jewel to mark it which is the turquoise and you can put it anywhere you like." I took the stone she handed me and placed it on the little whole at the bottom near the opening for the flamethrower which was carved in the shape of a traditional Zippleback head. "The pink topaz stone is in honor of the second test." I placed next hole in the hilt deciding on for mine a spiral pattern. "And finally the garnet is in honor of the 3rd test." I placed it in the next whole. She then took out a small box and opened it to reveal silvery oval inserts in the same cut as the jewels. "These are platinum inserts for the other holes. As you can see there are far more than 15 openings so you can decide on your own pattern. The inserts make the hilt more comfortable to hold. All of the jewels and inserts are cut to fit the exact shape of the hole and they come with a glue backing that I removed so you could place them, between that and the cut of the holes they'll never fall of once they are set, though they aren't so easy to remove to change them." I nodded as they helped me place all of the inserts in place. "You still have plenty of things to do of course, but this is the beginning. You know that this weekend we're going out for the wilderness survival camping trip. You're going with the entire wilderness class and Hiccup will be leading it while I stay here to watch the kids." I nodded. "It's the perfect opportunity for you to take the next exams, specifically training a dragon for someone else. Many of the trainees attending don't have a dragon of their own, preferring to get one during these moments. If you can train them for the other students, you already know how to train a dragon, it's simply a matter of adding the other students to the mix, then you'll pass."

I nodded. "What other tests could I pass there, and where are we going? Into the woods here?"

"No, the academic class as it were, is taught in the woods here. It poses no real challenge to survive in a place you've already been. You're far more advanced than most of the students going on this trip, though you don't have as much practice. For it to be a true test it has to be in an environment you're not familiar with. We've chosen Dragon Island as the place. It's perfect really. Harsh, but with all the necessities if you know where to find them, which is the main part of the test. It's also one of the best places to get wild dragons as pretty much all species are represented there at one time or another, even those not commonly found there so you'll be able to train many kinds of dragons for the exam. Hiccup will lead the group but you'll all separate into teams of 5, four trainee riders and one trainer in training that's going for the wilderness survival challenge to lead and Hiccup will coordinate the teams. You're allowed to take books on plant life of the island since you're not expected to memorize every single one, unless you're a full vampire of course, as well as supplies such as water, a knife or two for cooking, and of course your fire sword and shield for protection and a tent for protection from the elements but that's it. All of the groups will split up in a 5-mile radius and Hiccup will be watching out for you at the main camp along with the other teachers and volunteers going in case of an emergency, but you'll all be basically on your own."

"Isn't it too cold to camp?" I wondered.

"Not here it isn't. Remember our winter last most of the year. As long as the weather remains calm, there's no problems, that's part of the test. I nodded. "We'll discuss the rest later but for now that's where we're at. Well that and we still have another part of the class."

I nodded, yes I still had to learn to glide. For that part we moved to the south beach at Puffin Point which had complete open water and sky with no rock formations in the way and deep water as well. This time both Hiccup and Astrid shared in the training, each handling a different part. First Hiccup showed me how to open the wings of the flight suit while on the ground and when I had that down he flew up on Toothless to demonstrate how to jump of and glide. Then Astrid took me up on her dragon and, after tendering us together, we jumped off and glided on the air, kind of like learning to skydive where I would be tendered to my teacher until I learned the basics. They showed me how to move my body so I could steer while in flight, how to gain more altitude or speed, as much as I could on an unassisted flight anyway, and then how to slow down. In between that I was taught how to get back on my dragon and bail out repeatedly. It wasn't until about 2 hours later when we had repeated the exercise for the 10th time that I noticed Astrid and I were no longer connected as I got back on the dragon for the final time that day. My eyes bugged wide open in fear and Astrid and Hiccup laughed. "Took you long enough to see it," Hiccup laughed.

"What?" I asked, bewildered.

"Astrid released you after the third trial. You've been doing it alone since then. Kind of like teaching a kid to ride a bike, you hold on to them for a while, but eventually let them go so they can work on it alone. Relax, we were both close enough to grab you as were both dragons should you have any problems and we chose this time of the day specifically so that there would be plenty of updrafts to keep you aloft longer but few harsh gusts since the mountain breaks a good deal of them up. This is after all how you learn to fly. You get booted out of the nest."

"You could have told me," I said indignant.

"If we had you would have been too scared, only focusing on the fact that you don't have a safety blanket in place. When you didn't know you were able to stay focused on the exercise and practice the moves correctly. Yes you made mistakes, but nothing major that you couldn't compensate for and all simply because you thought Astrid was still there to pick up the slack if you failed. Which we were, but we were giving you space to work it out on your own."

"It's like when you teach a kid to swim, Bells. You teach them how to move and stay afloat in the water while been close enough to grab them if they have trouble. Then slowly widen the distance they can swim on their own until they swim the whole pool," Astrid added. "That's what we did. We taught you how to move and respond to the air, then once you had the hang of that gave you room to practice while still being in arms reach to grab you should you have a problem." I sighed and nodded as we landed. They were right. This was how everyone learned, even if it was scary. "Slowly we'll open up the circle and let you have more room to practice until you can go up on your own. But we'll work on that over time," Astrid said as we packed up and started towards home. "Eventually you'll be out on your own with only your dragon for company in the sky."

"Or playing in sky dances with your dragons," Hiccup finished.

"Sky dance?"

He grinned. "It was something the younger generations came up with. They and their dragons go up and glide around, pirouetting and doing acrobatic moves with each other to the rhythm of music. It's really fun actually. And it really does look like the dragons and trainers are dancing in the air. Actually, there's a party tonight in honor of the birth of my father. You can see it then, if you're up for it?" I nodded. I was indeed curious. Hell, I loved the adrenaline even when I got scared as I was learning. It made me feel human and alive and lately that was hard to come by. As we walked back to the house I wondered what Edward would say if he could see what I was doing now and laughed as I imagined the pure look of fear on his face as he watched me dive off a dragon. He really was too overprotective to do either of us any good…

The week flew by faster than the blink of the eye and before I knew it, the weekend had arrived and it was time to leave for Dragon Island. Hiccup had been right, I had loved the dragon dance at the festival and wanted to learn it as soon as possible. In fact they had to rein me in in my flight and gliding classes for the rest of the week. Or rein me in as much as they could as I had proven I had inherited the rather sizable stubborn streak of the Hooligan tribe. As attested by the fact that two days after learning to glide for the first time, I had passed my 4th and 5th trainer exams: Controlled Glide (Obsidian gem) and Maneuvered flight (lapis lazuli). Now they had expected the first but not the second and had begun to joke that maybe I was the reincarnation of another trainer and that that was why I seemed a natural at this. Whatever the case though I was thrilled, though shocked with my progress. Now Mamman and I were packing my backpack for the trip to the wilderness. Fury and Nightshade were staying home as they weren't yet strong enough for the trip and were seriously unhappy about it. They'd thrown a rather sizable tantrum the night before and it was only by snuggling up with them throughout the night that I was able to calm them. It was the first time I had slept through the night in some time without a single nightmare and I had begun to realize that, maybe that was what I needed, a snuggle bunny. I'd look into it more later. I grabbed three pairs of thick jeans for the cold and packed them in my bag as Astrid came out of my closet. "Here Bella. You'll need these," she said, handing me her bundle.

They were three new glide suits. "But I only had one?" I wondered.

She grinned. "I had a few more made for you. Honestly Bella, do you really think trainers only have the one suit. I had told you to have a few more made." I nodded as I packed them. "Given that you've already passed your glide exams, you can use them in the forest as both protection from the weather and also for flight." I nodded and picked up the edible plant books as well as the book on medicinal herbs and my trainer manual and packed them up as well. Astrid handed me the shirts and jackets and my toiletries bag that I packed up next. With that I closed the bag but felt like there was more I should take.

"Do I have everything?" I wondered.

Astrid nodded. "Yep. Those are your personal effects which is all you need to take. You'll be looking for your own food and water with some things supplied at the main camp. At the main camp you'll also be given your tent and sleeping bag if they are needed. There are 5 areas where you'll be setting up camp, in one there's a cave you can use for shelter, which would negate the need for a tent, another area is reserved for those that will be building survival shelters, but those are reserved for only the more advanced wilderness survival students which isn't where you'll be going. For the last three areas you'll need a tent. Each area has supplies assigned that you'll get at the main camp." I nodded and picked up my bag. It was just after sunrise so the kids were still sleeping. I'd said my goodbyes to them before tucking them in for the night. Now Cameron and Cailyn were pure vampires so they didn't sleep but they enjoyed resting their minds with the mental technique my ancestors had learned from the ancients that trained them. It was the closest to sleep a vampire could get and I knew it's benefits were well worth it since it allowed their over-developed minds a rest and helped to prevent petrification as weird as that sounded considering it was a condition brought on by sedentary life and sleeping was sedentary, but hey. I made a mental note to go by the book store and pick up some books on the stuff my ancestors knew for the Cullens if I ever found them again. Carlisle would just about die with all the knowledge that is still hidden from him. I grinned and, noticing, Astrid broke into my thoughts. "What's that grin about Bells?"

I sighed. "I was just thinking about the Cullens. Specifically Carlisle's reaction to finding out all that you guys know. I was thinking about picking up some books on the subjects."

Astrid nodded. I knew what she was thinking: if I could think about them then maybe I was making progress. She was sorta right. I could think about them, but it still hurt badly. It was him, however, that I couldn't think about or I'd break down. Maybe one day, far, far in the future but not now. I shook off my thought as another question came to mind. "Mamman, when will you guys be teaching me more about vampires?" I wondered.

Astrid looked startled. "You're right. In all of the hullabaloo, we'd forgotten that." She nodded. "Yes, we'll correct that after you come back from Dragon Island," she said. I nodded and we went out the door.

Astrid and I walked in silence the rest of the way to the academy where we were meeting up with the group. When we arrived, most everyone was there already. Hiccup met us at the door and gave me a warm hug then kissed his wife goodbye. With that we walked over to the group. Once everyone had arrived, Hiccup showed us the map of the area we were visiting. It encompassed a good portion of the south of the island and it was the flattest area in the whole island, which wasn't saying much. Hiccup and the teachers were going to set up camp at the cave where the Red Death used to have her nest while the 5 groups along with our 2 adult volunteers were going to hike away from the main camp in 2 main directions around the beach then split off to our own camps 5 miles away from the beach and into the forests surrounding the large mountain that was the nest. Next Hiccup had the 4 team leaders of the newer trainees, myself included, come up to the bowl and picked out the map for our own campsites so that it would be fair to all. I lucked out in getting the cave campsite and my team eagerly came to stand beside me. Some of the other kids tried to get changed to my group but Hiccup quickly settled things back down, afterwards he handed the more advanced group their map. With that we all mounted the Typhoomerangs that were taking us to the island. I was surprised but Hiccup explained that it was the fastest way otherwise we wouldn't have enough time to hike and set up our camps today. I didn't ride with the other kids, instead I rode on the back of Toothless with my ancestor and he and I spent the time talking about the rest of my training and what we'd find on the island.

Dragon Island was barren. That's the only way I could think of to describe it. We landed about an hour after sunrise at the beach and all I could see was rock and more rock. Honestly if the rest of the island was like this, then no wonder this was a survival test. By noon we had finished helping to set up the main camp. Now it's true that the vampires with us, my ancestor as well as 5 others, could have set it up in a matter of minutes, but the reason we were made to set it up was to prove that we could, that we knew how, before setting off. Part of the test. Once that was done, each of us was handed a colored backpack with the supplies appropriate to each of our camps. My team and I received the blue backpacks which contained what we needed for the weekend. There were no tents since we had the cave, but we did have sleeping bags, extra blankets for the cold, Ferro rods for starting a fire, pots for boiling water and cooking, plastic utensils, a water canteen, a first aid kit and an emergency radio for in case we ran into trouble which were handed to one of our adult volunteers. Each team also had 2 assigned adult chaperones to handle emergencies and also give us our exams, but it was up to me as team leader to hand out assignments. We didn't, however, get any food or water. I looked at the map before we set off and saw that there was a large stream where we could get water and even fish from so it would be fine. Actually from what I saw, no other group was getting food, water yes if there were no nearby sources, but we were expected to find our own food. Before leaving, Hiccup handed each team leader a folder of papers with the team assignments for the afternoon activities. Once that was done, we took off with down the beach until we found the path that led out and over the mountain. We stopped after about an hour in the clearing the adults led us to rest and get our bearings. Once there it was up to me to lead the way. While drinking my water, I looked over the map. We were supposed to find 4 other landmarks, the clearing being the 5th to lead us to the cave where we would set up camp: a large black rock that looked kind of like a square, once we got there we were supposed to see a large mountain in the shape of an eagle's head and head to the left of it, then we were supposed to find a huge tree who's bark was had been scratched out by the vampires to mark the trail while we were setting up the main camp, and the last being a large mountain with a lot of ice on its west end which is where the cave was located. It sounded simple enough.

I took out the compass and oriented myself in the direction the map indicated and found the trail. There were a lot of raised tree roots which I was worried about given that my balance was barely adequate on a flat surface, but what could you do. I double checked the path with the adult volunteers and then gathered my team up. "Okay guys, listen up, there's some things we need to do on the way to the camp," I told them, calling the group to attention. I handed out the assignments marked trail to everyone. "According to this list we have to find 4 markers on the map that will lead us to the cave, a large black rock that looked kind of like a square, once we get there we were supposed to see a large mountain in the shape of an eagle's head and head to the left of it, then we were supposed to find a huge tree who's bark was had been scratched out by the vampires to mark the trail while we were setting up the main camp, and the last being a large mountain with a lot of ice on its west end which is where the cave was located. We're also supposed to mark the trail we took by tying ribbons to a tree every few feet, but we decide how far apart. This is for two purposes, the first being finding our way back to the main camp easier and also because at the end of the day we'll be checked on and judged on our trail. We're also supposed to see if we can find food while on the trail, without straying too far out of the path."

"You should also try to see if you can identify plants, even if they aren't edible, you never know when you might need some herb or where you might run across it," the volunteer, Jenna, interjected. We all nodded in agreement.

"Since we're supposed to find food, does anyone have any suggestions?" I asked.

"Well where we're going, there's a river so we could fish," one of the girls, Anna Marten, said as she looked at them map over my shoulder.

I nodded. "True, but that can't be our only option, especially if we're to feed the dragons we might be taking back with us." They all nodded. "Does anyone know how to trap or hunt?" I asked, knowing those were not my specialties.

One of the two guys, Connor Buren, raised his hand. "My dad and I are trappers; I know how to set up snares and other traps to catch food and I did bring the materials with me in my personal effects figuring I might need them, we could also get more from the main camp." I nodded, that was a good plan.

Anna spoke up. "I know how to trap too, but I'm better at hunting I could help out."

"I'm pretty good at herbal sciences and IDeing plants, plus I brought a book on edible plants and medicinal herbs to help out with that," I put in.

Abigail, the girl with blond hair spoke up. "I'm pretty good at fishing and making fish traps," she put in.

"And I know how to fish manually plus I'm also pretty good at identifying plants as well," Derek, the other boy, put in.

I nodded. "So we have a plan then. Between the lot of us we should be able to come up with pretty decent meals given all our strengths." They nodded.

"But won't be getting food from the main camp?" Anna asked.

"No," Damian, the other volunteer put in. "We might be getting some things to supplement as needed, but the whole point of the exercise is for you to survive in the wild no matter the situation. Finding food is part of it. Of course myself and Jenna are here to help you and the camp is as well but we're more of a safety net in case of emergency. We can of course help out with the hunting and the fishing but the point is for you to work on your own."

We nodded. "When will we be trapping the dragons?" Anna wondered.

I had to suppress a glare. "We're not trapping them, first of all. You don't train dragons with cruelty, you'll never win their trust that way and they will never accept you if you do." I took a deep breath. "Dragons respond to kindness and patience. If you really want one of your own then I suggest you get those ideas out of your head right now. As for when we will search for them, that's for tomorrow. Of course if we happen to see some while heading for the cave we'll note their location on the map so we can find them later. Today's all about setting up our campsite."

"So we'll be training them tomorrow?" Derek wondered.

"Either tomorrow or the next day. I wasn't given any specific orders on that but I do imagine it will be tomorrow."

"But none of you will be training them," Damian put in.

"How so? How can we get a dragon if we don't train them?" Abigail wondered.

"It's simple really. Your team leader is a trainee dragon trainer. Each team is made up of 4 dragon rider trainees and one dragon trainer trainee as team leader. When we find the dragons it is up to your team leader to approach them and rain them in then she will show you how to train them, but none of you are allowed to approach a dragon without your team leader or at least one of us. It's too risky. Dragons back on Berk won't hurt you but these are all wild dragons. They don't mean any harm but they will defend themselves if they feel threatened. All of you are used to dragons, but the dragons you're used to are all trained or at the very least very used to people. These dragons are wild and so they are not. Bella, here has already completed all five of her rider exams and 3 of the trainer exams plus she got her dragons from the wild so she's the best candidate for leading the teams. The other team leaders all have the same passed exams but Bella's the only one who has tamed and trained a wild dragon before. If and when we find the wild ones she will approach them first, tame them and then bring you in as she sees fit. It's possible the dragon won't be accepting of any of you but they might accept another trainer so we will take them back with us regardless. Now I think it's time that we move on we want to arrive at the cave with plenty of time to set up camp and find something to eat," Damian side. We all nodded, packed up and continued walking.

It was a very long walk taking up the better part of the day, but we finally made it to the camp site. We wouldn't know for sure until the evening how well we did when the vampires tell us how good our trail was. I mean I thought it was pretty good, but we could have taken a longer route and not known it. Damian stopped us all at the mouth of the cave with the order to stay put. It wasn't safe to enter the cave until we knew for sure it was empty of all wildlife. Once he had ascertained it was safe we headed in. It was a big cave with plenty of room and very interesting rock formations. Now because it was winter we could not stay near the mouth of the cave as the wind would be too cold so we headed a ways in and set up our camp once we'd rounded the corner towards the back of the cave so we could use the corner to block wind. Once there we entered a huge bowl-shaped antechamber covered in crystals that reflected the light of the torches we had made to enter the cave. They would give us great illumination with little wood burning. Up on the roof there was a small opening that allowed a small view of the sky.

"Won't that make things too cold?" I asked Damian pointing to the opening.

He studied it for a bit before answering. "Only of we have a bad snow storm. It's actually a good feature since it allows for a good air exchange. However it is good you picked up on that. While we're supposed to have mild weather this weekend, things can change unexpectedly in this part of the world so we need to be aware of that." I nodded and started setting up my own camp. Now yes we were all one group and the fire was to be set up for all of us but because of the size of the cave we'd agreed that we'd each have our own spaces with a small fire to keep us warm as we sleep, reason being we'd need that space for the dragons. Now my dragons weren't here but the others were sure to get theirs so we needed to have space made for them. Since I didn't have my dragons with me my camp would be small so I chose a small nook with an outcropping of rock that made a small shelter underneath the skylight, the outcropping making a roof for my camp. Ironically I still had room for my two dragons though it would be a bit tight, but since we like to snuggle that's fine. I laughed once I finished setting up my sleeping bag and my fire, all I really needed. I guess I unconsciously prepared an area where Fury and Nightshade could be even though they were home with my Mamman and the kids.

By late afternoon, all of our camps were set, both the smaller trainer camps where they would sleep and keep their future dragons and also a larger gathering area with a larger fire where our kitchen stuff was. We were a bit late setting up but it was okay, we still had plenty of daylight to get food. Once ready I divided the groups, Connor and Anna went out to hunt and trap some meat while Abigail and Derek went to the river to fish. Meanwhile I went back to the trail with Jenna to gather edible plants and also herbs for taking care of wounds and find dragon nip, all of which were in our assignments. We were in luck, not too far from the river there was an open field where there were plenty of edible roots and leafy greens as well as a large patch of dragon nip which we would need come morning. Now I was surprised by all of this. It was the middle of winter and there was snow on the ground but still we had here an open field filled with greens. Jenna explained that because of the volcanic activity, ground temperature was higher than air so it never freezes also dragons helped maintain these areas by melting the snow or digging around in search of food which allowed plants to grow, plus all of what grows naturally in the Barbarian Archipelago has evolved to bloom even in the harshest winter. "It's only for plants like rice or sugar that we need to have very specialized places to grow them because they would never survive here. It's why our ancestors didn't know of them and didn't allow them on the island until fairly recently, about 200 years ago or so to grow them when the methods that would allow them to survive were established. Earlier they were imported, but importing is pricey so it made little sense to bring a lot in until we could grow it ourselves," she explained. I nodded and set about gathering as much as I could to bring back.

After about an hour we headed back to the cave with our food, plenty for dinner and breakfast the next day before we'd have to gather again. I made a note on the map as well as my trainer guide of where the field was so that we could return to it easily. Once we arrived at the camp, we saw that the others had also been in luck. Connor and Anna were cleaning 7 fat rabbits they hat caught, taking care to preserve the hide as they separated it while Abigail and Derek were cleaning a large catch of fish, from what I saw about 20 pounds of it, far more than we could eat but still not enough to feed the dragons. Because of the cold they would last for a while so I was glad. We had plenty of food and water to drink since Abigail had also filled plenty of water container form the river and sanitized them already from what they told me. Together we all gathered up to clean and prepare our meal. About an hour into the work we heard a commotion outside. Frowning, both I and our adult gui-des pulled out our fire swords and lit them up. "What is that?" Abigail asked.

"We don't know, but it sounds like trouble," Damian answered. "Go to the back of the cave and stay put, right now Bella, Jenna and I are the only ones that can fight and defend. Likely a dragon has chosen to use this cave for shelter tonight but you never know. Bella hang back a bit, get on the radio and inform the main camp, we may need some reinforcements." I nodded and pulled out the radio as I walked behind Damien and Jenna. Why was I allowed to go you may ask, when I wasn't that much older than the kids with us? Because I was the dragon trainer here and as such if it was a dragon I would be the one to subdue without hurting it. Still we'd need backup so I quickly informed Hiccup of the situation and he said he'd be here as soon as possible. I followed Damien and Jenna out of the cave and we looked around. There didn't seem to be anything outside. I crouched down on the sandy ground and studied the claw marks I'd found.

"Dragon?" I asked.

Jenna nodded. "Not a mark I'm familiar with but yes only a dragon would make a mar that big."

We studied the area but couldn't find where the dragon had gone. "Where did it go? Did it give up?" Damien and Jenna both shrugged. It was a bit strange. As I walked by a large hedge and heard a rustle. I whirled around to face it, fire sword held at the ready. Damian and Jenna walked up to stand beside me upon seeing me move. The rustling continued. "Come out," I called. In response the rustling increased and all three of us backed up to make room. From out of the hedges burst two black shadows. We jumped back and kept backing up for a good 10 feet. It was then I got a good look at our visitors. Two… black… Night Furies, and a very well know pair to me. "Fury? Nightshade?" Indeed it was my two pet dragons. They ran at me and proceeded to knock me over nuzzling into me. I landed on the ground with both dragons rubbing into me and making me giggle with their tickling caress. "What are you doing here?" asked as I rubbed Fury's great head. "How did you even get here?"

"Bella, are these your dragons?" Jenna asked.

I nodded as I extricated myself from them and stood up. They nuzzled into my side and purred. "Yeah, but I have no idea how they even got here. They were supposed to be home with Astrid," I said as I petted them. I couldn't help it. Heck, I probably should be mad they disobeyed me and followed but I wasn't. I'd missed them so much, besides I was so curious to know how they even got here. They weren't on the dragons with us, and they can't fly on their own. As I was petting them I took a look at my pets. They had a few minor scratches on their hides, nothing really worrisome what surprised me too see was that they were wearing a harness each. Now the harnesses were no longer they the big bulky one used in the past but more streamline models, lighter and with better, lighter materials. They had their saddles on and the prosthesis tail fluke but they couldn't have flown on their own without a rid…er. It was then I got a look at the prosthesis… the solo flukes. Those could be worn with or without the harness and they simply fly with them. About the only reason I know the difference if because the tips of it have blue point to distinguish them from the normal. Looks like they flew here on their own, but with the full harness on so I could just switch to manual and control the flight when I ride. How…?

At the very same moment I was making these conclusions, Poppa arrived with two other vampires. It was comical how his jaw hit the floor when he recognized the dragons rubbing into me. I smiled at him and shook my head.

"Of all the most stubborn…" Hiccup began then shook his head with a grin. "I told you they'd be a handful." I just shrugged and led the dragons inside. They were here, they might as well stay. Hiccup checked them up, they hadn't been ready for a trip like this, but other than a couple of scratches they were fine and eager. He sighed and sent one of the other vampires back to the camp for some more fish for their dinner. True we did catch quite the haul but not enough for one dragon let alone 2 and they obviously weren't going anywhere as they settle into my little camping nook. He sighed. "Well since we're here I can tell you all that you've done a magnificent job with this camp. Very good work. You're all on your way to success with this exam if you keep this up." He pulled an envelope from his backpack and handed it to me. "This is tomorrow's mission. You'll be going out to find your dragons. You lucked out in that this particular area has a lot of diversity. Also with Bella's stubborn pets. Watch her with them, learn how to care and handle your dragon from her. Tomorrow, you'll be replicating the same. Inside the envelope is a map of the area with all the dragon territories that surround it as well as information on the dragons that have been observed living in this area. I know all of you have your ideas as to what dragon you want, however, the one you want may not choose you, so be prepared. Dragons choose their rider, not the other way around. Since Bella here is the only trainer certified to train a wild dragon in your group she will be the one to handle the dragon then introduce you to them. Keep in mind that she will be the one to choose which of you will be the one that will approach and only that person. So even if you see the dragon you want, listen to her since if you do not follow her lead you, not her, will be the one in grave danger. The dragons will attack if they feel threatened. Whatever instructions Bella gives you are designed to keep you safe as well as the dragon and make sure everything goes correctly.

"You also need to remember that dragons are stubborn by nature. Case in point," he said gesturing to Fury and Nightshade as they were snuggled into our nook and eating the dinner brought for them from the camp. "These two were supposed to remain on Berk. They weren't ready to venture out on a trip like this, but they stubbornly came anyway. Both of Bella's dragons have a disabled tail fluke so they need prosthesis in order to fly. It just so happens that my wife chose to work with them on the solo tail fluke today and they literally threw her off of them along with the other rider working with her and flew off to find Bella. I received these news over the radio while I was checking on their health. And while even I think it is hilarious, it does illustrate how stubborn they can be. They wanted to be here with their trainer and no power on earth would sway them. They might have even swam here if they couldn't fly but without a working tail fluke they could have drowned so this is something you need to be aware of. No one will judge you of you choose not to take on the responsibility of training a dragon. They are difficult to manage and a much larger responsibility than any regular dragon. You do not need to get them at this point, you can wait as long as you like. If you choose to get your dragon today, keep in mind that you will rarely train with them in school. We train dragons specifically for the school because they are better able to compensate for your mistakes while learning. The ones you get now will be straight from the wild. Bella will tame them for you but it is your job to train them. All of you have been told what that entails and I don't need to go over that. They are your responsibility just as Fury and Nightshade are Bella's and mine is Toothless. Now after dinner, which I see you have quite the selection, good for you, some of the other groups weren't as successful, you can review the papers for tomorrow. Also give Bella your choices for dragon, only your top three and we'll see if they can be found. Keep in mind that just because they may have been seen here before doesn't mean that they are all still here to be found so make sure you are okay with that. Study your dragon manuals before bed and be ready for tomorrow at first light is when you will set off on your search. Good night to you all." Hiccup grinned and then he and the other vampires walked out of the cave leaving us alone to prepare.


End file.
